


Guilty by Association

by Regann



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Case Fic, Charles You Slut, M/M, Misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-26 23:11:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 61,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regann/pseuds/Regann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While investigating the homicide of a John Doe who he suspects might've been murdered while working the streets as a prostitute, Detective Erik Lehnsherr finds an unexpected ally in a hooker named Charles who seems as determined as he to solve the case. As they become more deeply involved both with the case and each other, there's just one thing that Charles neglects to mention -- that he's really an investigative journalist, one quickly convinced that what they're dealing with is more than simple murder. cop!Erik, fake-hooker-slash-reporter!Charles, Modern AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Everything I know about law enforcement and investigative journalism, I learned from watching television. Don't expect any more realism here than you'd find on an episode of CSI or L&O. There is also some _State of Play_ influence in this fic as well, although you don't need to have seen it to understand anything in this fic.

**Guilty by Association**

Erik knew that it wasn't going to be a good day when it started before dawn, only a few hours after he'd finally managed to fall asleep.

"What?" he growled into his ringing cell phone, too sleepy to bother checking the Caller ID to see who it was. The phone had almost hit the floor before he'd caught it, fumbling around in the dark to find it where he'd laid his cell on his nightstand.

"Sorry," he heard through the phone, immediately recognizing his partner's voice. "But I just got the call. They want us to come in."

"Any reason why?" Erik grumbled, groping around to flick on the bedside lamp. He squinted against the sudden intrusion of light and cursed under his breath. Thankfully, his partner knew to ignore it.

"Why they called me?" Darwin asked. "Maybe because they didn't want to deal with your sparkling personality."

Erik snorted into the phone. "Why did they call us in, Muñoz, instead of letting whoever is on duty handle it?"

"Oh." Darwin sighed, a sound that carried through the connection. "There's been another murder. It looks like it might be related to the Tabram case. I'm on my way to the scene now."

It was Erik's turn to sigh, his mind shaking off the last vestiges of sleep as he climbed out of bed, untangling himself from the covers. "Text me the address and I'll meet you there."

"Will do," Darwin said. "And bring coffee."

There was a dial tone in his ear before Erik could growl at Darwin's parting request and he dropped the phone on his rumpled sheets as he searched around for something clean and presentable to wear to yet another crime scene. He eventually found a pair of slacks and a mostly clean button-down, which might've been the ones he'd just shrugged off a few hours before. Erik didn't bother to do more than run a hand through his hair before he pulled his gun from the bedside table, grabbed his keys and badge from the kitchen table and headed out the door, just as his phone beeped a notification that he'd received a text.

He did stop for coffee, but only because he wouldn't be able to function himself without a jolt of caffeine, not when he was running on less than three hours of sleep. Once he had a cup in his hand, Erik checked the address Darwin had sent and pointed his car toward the Bronx. The intersection that was his destination was familiar to him, if only because it was less than five blocks from where they'd found Martin Tabram less than two weeks before, a murder in his case load that still remained unsolved thanks to a paucity of evidence that drove Erik insane. While Erik wanted to catch whoever had cut the kid open and left him lying in an alley, he didn't like the fact that his chance might come because of someone else's death.

Once he got within the vicinity of the crime scene, the flashing lights and loitering uniforms led him the rest of the way. As he got out of his car, he noticed Darwin standing at the edge of the police tape, obviously waiting for him. Despite the late -- or early -- hour and the unexpectedness of the call, Darwin looked as collected as ever, hands buried in the pockets of his long coat.

"Here," Erik said in lieu of an actual greeting, shoving the second Styrofoam cup of coffee at him.

"Hey, you heard," Darwin said, accepting the cup. "Thanks." Erik's mood must've shown on his face because Darwin rolled his eyes as he took a quick sip of the hot brew, wincing a little as if it might've been a little too hot. "Don't give me that attitude. You weren't the only one unhappy to get yanked out of bed. Alex wasn't exactly thrilled about it either."

"Alex?" It took Erik a moment to place the name, frowning as he did so. "Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting you're dating that flack."

"Well, it's only been a year," Darwin said dryly, his sarcasm so faint someone else might've missed it. Erik knew that, too, but it didn't seem like particularly pertinent information at something close to 4AM. "And that 'flack' is heading up a pretty prestigious re-election campaign, especially for someone his age."

Erik ducked under the police tape and motioned for Darwin to follow him. He was about to tell his partner that he didn't really care about his boyfriend's job before curiosity got the better of him. "Which campaign is that?"

"Governor Shaw's," Darwin replied, which brought Erik up short.

"Shaw?" he asked, in the same tone someone might've said "the devil," which wasn't a bad comparison in Erik's mind. "Really?"

"I'm not dating him for his political beliefs," Darwin said.

"No, I'm sure it's for his keen legal mind," Erik shot back, recalling another conversation where Darwin had referred to his boyfriend as pre-law.

"Among other things," Darwin deadpanned, which brought a grin to Erik's face. " _Anyway_ ," Darwin continued. "Do you want to know about our vic or not?"

Erik nodded, taking another gulp from his coffee. "Let's hear it."

"Uniforms found the body a little after 3AM, then called it in," Darwin said, not even bothering to check his notes. "It was those two over there -- Hanson and Penhall. Anyway, Azazello responded but when they saw how much it looked like the Tabram case, the Captain told him to call us in."

Erik nodded again. "Can we take a look around?"

"Yeah, CSU said to head over whenever," Darwin said. "Come on."

One of the things Erik liked best about having Armando Muñoz -- Darwin, as the nickname went -- as a partner for the last three years was that he had quickly come to understand that there was only so much bullshit Erik could take on any given day, and Darwin had seamlessly set himself up to deal with as much of it as he could to save everyone from Erik's explosive temper. It was a good system, one that had earned them a lot more goodwill from the rest of the precinct, even where Erik had thought he'd lost it long ago.

It also kept the Captain off Erik's back just that much more, something he was certainly grateful for. They had enough problems when he wasn't pissing off the rest of the department.

The scene he found was eerily reminiscent of the last one: the body was messily sprawled out far enough down the alley that it wouldn't attract immediate attention from passers-by, on its back so that the messy array of stab wounds to the stomach was clearly visible even as Erik approached. The victim was still clothed, like Tabram had been, wearing jeans and a wife-beater. His own practiced eye told Erik that their victim wasn't quite as young as Tabram had been, probably closer to his mid-20s than his late teens.

"Any ID?" Erik asked, the question directed at Darwin.

It was the young ME, Dr. McCoy, who answered, however. "None of that I found upon cursory examination," he said, not even bothering to look up from where he examined the body. "His pockets are empty and CSU didn't find anything in the immediate vicinity."

"Same as Martin Tabram," Darwin noted.

"Hopefully, fingerprints will help with that," McCoy said. He finally glanced up at Erik. "If it's all right with you, Detective, I'm ready to get him out of here."

"Just give me a minute, McCoy," Erik said.

The ME shrugged, straightening to stand next to Darwin and give Erik the room he needed to make his own perusal of the scene. He heard Darwin's low "Thanks, Hank" to McCoy, but he ignored it, his entire attention focused on the unfortunate young man who ended up on the wrong side of a knife.  
All the broad details read like the Tabram case, a fact that Erik didn't like one bit. If the smaller details lined up as well, there was a chance that this was someone who might keep killing and that was the last thing he wanted to see happen. He knew some other cops didn't necessarily feel that way about the prostitutes like Tabram and maybe their new victim, but Erik didn't make that kind of differentiation in his head; victims deserved justice, no matter who they were.

"Thanks, McCoy," he said after a moment, moving away. "He's all yours."

Erik didn't wait to see what McCoy did next before he headed off toward the uniforms that Darwin had pointed out earlier. "Let's see if we can get something out of these guys," he said, nodding toward Hanson and Penhall.

Officers Hanson and Penhall, it turned out, weren't very interested in being helpful when they'd already made up their minds about the victim and dismissed his murder as just "one of those things." It took every ounce of patience Erik had to grit his teeth and make it through the interview with them.

"Just start from the top," he ground out. "How did you find the vic?"

"We were doing a sweep for prostitutes," Hanson said. "There's usually some activity out here about then, you can usually find a few to cite. I flashed my torch down the alley, saw him lying there."

"It looks like we found one, just not the way we'd planned," Penhall added.

"Do you have any reason to assume the vic was working the street?" Erik asked.

Hanson shrugged. "Everyone on the beat knows about the boy you found a few weeks ago right down the street. Then we've got this guy, young, barely dressed, kinda pretty? It makes sense. He probably got rolled by a john, just like the last one."

"If you think of anything else, give us a call, okay?" Darwin cut in before anyone could say anything inflammatory. "You know where to find us."

Erik shot them one last dirty look before he walked off, Darwin on his heels. "What do you think?" Darwin asked.

"I think it does look a lot like Tabram, enough for Azazello, those bozos and Frost to notice," Erik admitted. "And I don't like that one damned bit. We're one pattern or victim from a serial and that's the last thing we need on the streets."

"We have even less to go on than we did with Tabram at the moment," Darwin added. "Hopefully, we'll get a hit on the vic's prints in the system and at least get a name."

"Yeah." Erik scrubbed a hand over his face. "I really wanted today to be better than yesterday."

"I had some plans that didn't involve freezing my ass off at a crime scene, too," Darwin said, half-humor, half-commiseration. "Them's the breaks."

"No shit," Erik said, earning a flash of a smile from his partner, white teeth against dark skin in the flashing blue light from one of the squad cars. "Let's head back to the precinct. We aren't going to get much done until we hear more from McCoy and CSU anyway."

"Right on," Darwin said. He might've been about to say more, but his phone beeped and Darwin stopped to check it.

"Anything interesting?" Erik asked.

"Not to you," Darwin told him, tucking the phone back into his pocket without answering the text. Erik noticed that the smile lingered on his partner's face. "Just something from Alex. Like I said, not happy about me slinking out of bed in the middle of the night."

"He'll get over it," Erik said as they reached his car. He started to fish around in his pocket for his keys.

"Yeah," Darwin agreed, "He will." He shot Erik a glance over his shoulder as he walked over to his own vehicle. "At least you don't have anyone waiting to bitch you out at home tonight."

Erik knew Darwin meant it as a positive, but Erik couldn't stop the pang it gave him to think of a time when he had had someone waiting at home, even if it was just so they could have yet another screaming match. Then he shook his head and decided he was definitely sleep-deprived if he was missing _Magda_.

"See you in a few," he called after Darwin before he drove off, his mind already turning away from his own dismal personal life and focusing on what was important: figuring out who had murdered Martin Tabram and what looked like a second young man as well.

At least Erik could be certain of one thing: it definitely wasn't going to be a good day.

**

When it looked like it would take the CSU team a few hours to get anything useful back to them, Erik caught a quick nap stretched out on the sofa in Frost's office, despite the fact that she often reminded him that her office and her furniture weren't there for his benefit. However, she didn't say anything to that effect when she woke up him mid-morning by smacking him over the head with the report he'd been waiting on from the crime scene guys.

"I think there's been enough sleeping on the job, Detective," she said, sliding around him to reach her desk chair. "Why don't you try working instead?"

Erik let out a little groan as he pulled himself into a sitting position, cracking his neck a little. "Damn this thing is bad on the joints."

"Probably because it's not made for detectives to use as their bed away from home," Frost reminded him as she opened a file on her desk.

"Cut a guy some slack, Emma," he said, standing up and stretching the kinks out of his back. "You gave me a whole three hours off duty before you called me back in."

She gave him a measuring look over the edge of the folder. "I know you'd want this one if it ends up related to the Tabram case," she said. "And I didn't want to hear you go off on Azazello if he worked the scene and did something you didn't like. Believe it or not, this _was_ the best option."

"I know, I know," he said. "Just give me a few minutes."

"Exactly two," she told him. "Because I'm expecting an 11 o'clock call from the mayor that you really shouldn't be privy to."

Erik noticed the clock was ticking from 10:57 to 10:58, so he scooped up his report and left her to her call, cutting through the hubbub of the bullpen until he found Darwin hunched over his desk, phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder. He was scribbling as he listened so Erik didn't interrupt him, instead perching on the edge of his own desk to flip through the crime scene report. Its lack of usefulness was disheartening, but it wasn't the technicians' fault that an alleyway made for a messy crime scene. Dozens of probably unrelated prints had been picked up on the brick nearby, as well as footprints, cigarette butts, trash and other pieces of evidence that would most likely be ruled unrelated to their vic's case. It was their first dead end of the case and it didn't bode well for the rest of it.

"Yeah, yeah, gotcha," Darwin was saying as Erik tossed the file down in frustration. "Thanks, man. Let me know if you get anything, okay?" He let the phone receiver hit the cradle with a loud clack.

"That good, huh?" Erik asked, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Nothing so far on John Doe's prints," Darwin said. "It's not hopeful that they'll be a match at this point."

"Damn."

"But doesn't that probably rule out this vic being a prostitute?" Darwin asked. "I mean, Tabram had been brought in on solicitation a few times before, it's why we had his prints in the system."

"John Doe could be new to the game," Erik said. "But yeah, he might not be a pro at all. We just don't have enough information yet. The similarities to the Tabram case might prove to be incidental."

"But you don't think so."

Erik shrugged. "I don't know, but I definitely have a feeling about the crime scene. I can't put my finger on it, but..."

"Hank called a few minutes ago," Darwin informed him. "He's ready for us whenever we can make it down."

"Let's go," Erik said. "Everything else has been a bust. Maybe McCoy will have something."

If there was ever a person made to work in the bowels of the morgue, he was pretty sure it was Dr. Hank McCoy. Emma continually assured him that McCoy was young and brilliant, one of the most respected doctors in his field, and that they'd been lucky to lure him away from the FBI in the first place. When he'd asked how they'd accomplished that, she'd given him some song and dance about McCoy's personal reasons that may or may not have involved some girl he was in love with, but Erik hadn't been very interested by that point. Frankly, it didn't matter how many accolades the good doctor might have attached to his name, all Erik saw when he looked at McCoy was an extremely awkward and uncoordinated young man who still bore the emotional scars of a lifetime of teasing by his peers.

"McCoy!" he barked as he and Darwin swept into the morgue. "I'm here about my John Doe."

"I figured as much," McCoy said, poking his head out of his office. "I sent the prints up as soon as I could. Any luck?"

"None," Darwin answered. "We're hoping you'll turn that around for us."

"I'm not sure what I have will help without an ID," he admitted. He slipped his labcoat back on and gestured for the police officers to follow him toward one of the exam tables where their vic lay waiting.

"We'll take what you have," Erik told him.

McCoy nodded, slipped on his gloves before he began to point out his findings on the vic's body. "Some defensive wounds on the hands," he revealed, lifting John Doe's right hand. "I scrapped the nails and sent it to Trace for analysis." He gently laid down the victim's arm. "He took about five stab wounds to stomach and chest, although the first one did him in. The others were...overkill, maybe?" McCoy shook his head like he personally disagreed with the sentiment. "So far, I can tell you they were made with a long, very sharp blade, but I'll need more time for something definitive."

"How closely do they match the wounds in the Tabram case?" Erik asked.

"Generally similar, but I don't think the weapon was the same one," McCoy told him. "But there was overkill in that case, too, with closer to ten stab wounds. Do you think it's the same guy?"

"What do you think?" Darwin asked.

"I don't think it's the same weapon," McCoy said after a moment. "Whatever was used on Tabram had a shorter, dull blade. But if it's the same guy, he could've upgraded when it didn't do the job as cleanly as he liked the first time. Tabram had similar defensive wounds so they were both likely attacked from the front, head on."

"That all?"

"Victim shows signs of recent anal intercourse, but there was no semen," McCoy told him. "There is also some contusions and scratches that are more consistent with rough intercourse than a fight. The details are in my report, which I was about to email up to you guys."

"Another point for the prostitution angle," Darwin said. "He might've been working when he got jacked."

"Yeah," Erik agreed. "Which just means we run into that serial problem again." Turning to McCoy, he asked, "Anything else you noticed that might help with figuring out who he was?"

"He's got a star tattoo at the top of his left buttock, which isn't all that distinctive in the scheme of things, since apparently it's fairly common in gay porn circles." When McCoy noticed the looks he got from both Erik and Darwin, he flushed, fiddling with his glasses. "What? I Googled it!"

"Stop reading TheSword," Darwin advised mildly which only made McCoy turn a brighter shade of red.

"I'll need a photo to take around," Erik told him. "Can you get me one?"

"It's already printed out, just in case," McCoy told him, waving toward the printer in his office.

"Thanks, McCoy," Erik told him as he made a grab for the photo. "Let me know if you find anything else."

"Looks like you're going to be working the streets tonight, boss," Darwin teased as they made their way back to their desks.

"Shut up, Muñoz," Erik warned. "Or else I'll send you out to do the leg work."

"Never," Darwin laughed. "It reminds you of the old good days, mixing it up on the streets."

"The good old days working Vice?" Erik shook his head. "I don't remember any of those."

The rest of the day was spent chasing down reports and leads on other cases, as well as further exploring any links that might exist between Tabram and their newest murder victim. Nothing was immediately apparent other than the surface similarities and when no further developments were made on the issue of their victim's identity, Erik resigned himself to a night of walking the streets near the murder scenes and asking the working girls and boys if they recognized the victim. Considering it was his second night spent in such a way in less than a month, he wasn't surprised to see a few familiar faces among the scantily-clad women on the street corners, a few of whom remembered him in turn.

"Detective Lehnsherr," said a tall, thin woman who answered to Amber. She'd been fairly helpful when he'd come looking for information on Martin Tabram and he was hoping she'd be of similar aid on his newest case. Tonight she had added a truly obnoxious faux-leather jacket lined in leopard print over her boots and mini-dress. "Still looking for whoever cut up that boy?"

"I am," he told her. "But now I'm trying to find out about this man as well." He showed her the photo of the John Doe that McCoy had taken in the morgue. "Do you know who he is?"

"No," she said, leaning in closer. Her eyes widened. "Is he dead?"

"Unfortunately," he answered. "And I think who killed him might've killed Martin, too."

"Hey, Amber!" They both turned as another woman came from the shadows, her face dark and thunderous. "What the hell you doing, talking to that cop? And don't try to act like he ain't one because he looks it up and down."

"He's just asking some questions, Lexi," Amber told her. "He's not trying to make us."

Lexi looked younger than Amber, but harder, too, like life had been more unkind to her than it ought to have been. She had a mass of heavily teased red hair that haloed around her face, its artificial color even brighter under the orange glow of the streetlights. "Are you sure he ain't just sniffing around for some action and then he's going to slap the cuffs on us?" she demanded to know, with a glare in his direction. "He wouldn't be the first cop to come down here looking for a date."

"I'm just trying to find out if anyone knows this man right here," he told her, holding out the photo again. "Someone killed him last night and that's the only person I'm looking to slap into cuffs at the moment."

Lexi looked at him long and hard for a moment, until Amber hissed, "He's one of the nice ones, Lex, I promise. I told you he came around right after that other boy was killed."

"I just want some information, Lexi," Erik promised. "That's all."

"I don't know nothing," she finally said, her features softening. "But a few lights down -- there's three or four boys who work together, ever since the Martin kid got stuck. He might be one of them or they might know him."

"Thanks, Lexi," he said, hoping what passed for a smile on his face softened his features enough that she'd know she had nothing to fear from him. He pulled one of his cards from his pocket, just like the one he'd given Amber when they'd first met. "If you think of anything or see anything or just need some help, you call me, okay? Either me or Detective Muñoz."

He left the girls to their corner and headed in the direction that Lexi had pointed him, down a few blocks from where she and Amber plied their trade. He passed other suspicious girls working the street, and he noticed several cars slow down once he'd passed them by. He still hadn't seen any young men working and he was about to give up on Lexi's information when he finally spotted a pair of them in the dim light of a streetlamp. One was definitely dressed for action -- tight jeans, tight shirt, shivering in the cool air with nothing but a flannel over it -- but the other was better dressed, a heavy coat over slacks and a button-down. Erik would've taken him for a customer if not for the fact that, as he approached, the young man was doing something rather obscene to his own finger with his mouth in what Erik only assumed was some kind of mimicry of the skills he was offering.

"Is that how you advertise?" he asked before he could stop himself, and both young men whipped their heads around to look at him.

The first boy looked frightened, but the other one just gave him a flirty smile as he pulled his finger from his mouth, something bright and shiny clenched between his teeth, which he spit into his palm. "Can't say I've ever thought of it like that," he said, surprising Erik further by revealing a soft British accent to his words.

"You know there's been two murders in the area in less than a month," he told them, discreetly flashing his badge from where it was clipped to his belt.

"I've heard," the first one said, his eyes jumping between Erik and the second young man. "Just last night, right?"

"Right," Erik said. He pulled out the photo. "Do either of you know him?"

"No, never seen him," the first one said quickly, eyes still darting over to the second one whose gaze hadn't left Erik since he'd walked up. He was, in Erik's estimation, unusually brash compared to most of the hookers he met on the streets.

"And you?" Erik asked, holding the photo out to him.

The boy leaned in as if to study the photo more closely, bringing his face from the shadows and into the light. He had nice features, young, with tousled brown hair; his mouth was slick and red from his little finger-sucking stunt and it seemed ready to quirk up in another grin. "I don't know him, Officer," he said cheerfully. "Sorry."

"Detective," Erik automatically corrected him. "Do either of you know anything?"

The second one shook his head. "I'm as eager to find out something as you are."

"It's dangerous to be out, after what happened to this guy last night," Erik told them. "Why don't you both take the night off?"

"You're out here," the second one pointed out.

"I'm a cop," Erik reminded him. "I've got to do my job."

"So we're all in the same boat, then," he said, tugging the first one away from Erik with a hand on his arm. "My friend and I have some things to talk about, so if you'll excuse us?"

Something made Erik want to protest as he watched the pair head down the street together, but he knew that he couldn't save them all. With a sigh, he tucked his photo of John Doe back in his jacket and doubled back toward his car.

 _End of Part 1_


	2. Chapter 2

Charles was still so sleepy as he dragged himself into his sunny kitchen the next morning that he almost didn't notice his sister sitting primly at his kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee while she flipped through a magazine.

 _Almost_.

"Raven," he sighed as he grabbed the kettle from the stove and filled it with tap water. "What are you doing here?"

"I needed a place to crash," she explained, tossing her long, golden hair over her shoulder.

"Have you tried your home? I've heard that that's what they're for, you know," he told her as he lit the burner under the kettle, then turning to retrieve his favorite mug from the cabinet.

Raven made an inelegant sound of derision deep in her throat. "I can't. I'm avoiding _him_."

Charles didn't need to ask for clarification on "him." "Surely you have a girlfriend you could've stayed with?"

"You're acting like you don't even want me around," she said with a pout. "It's not even like you were here last night."

"I was here," he protested, adding a tea bag to his mug. "I just didn't get in until late."

She grinned at him. "Fun night?"

"I was working," he answered, watching the kettle as if his intense gaze could make the water heat more quickly.

"Is that what you're calling it these days?"

Charles shot her an un-amused look, running a hand through his messy hair. "I was out doing interviews, if you must know. Following up a lead I got yesterday."

"Does it have something to do with this?" Raven rifled through a stack of papers on the kitchen table and held up the printed version of the photograph Hank had emailed him the day before. "I had to turn him over, he looks dead."

"He _is_ dead," Charles informed her as the kettle finally whistled. He gratefully poured the hot liquid over his tea bag, then added a drip of honey before heading to the refrigerator for a splash of milk. "He's a John Doe who was found murdered yesterday morning."

Raven turned the photo back over and buried it underneath Charles's collection of newspapers from the previous morning. "Why don't you ever work on happy stories?"

"Because the world doesn't reward feel-good stories about puppies and rainbows, that's why," he said, sliding into the seat next to her at the table. He took a sip from his mug and let the tea begin to work its magic. "The police don't know who killed him -- they don't even know who he is. Hank thought I might be able to find out something they couldn't."

"I can't believe you're still in contact with him," Raven told him. "You're my brother, you shouldn't be on such good terms with my ex."

"You dumped him, love, not vice versa," Charles gently reminded her. "And he was my friend long before he was your ex. Try to remember that."

Raven sighed, turning a few pages in her magazine with a little more force than necessary. Charles still wasn't sure why her relationship with Hank McCoy was such a sore spot when she had very pointedly dropped him, breaking his heart rather spectacularly, but it continued to be so, even almost a year later. Her petulant attitude, however, wasn't going to make Charles give up a good friend and an even better source of information.

"Anyway," she said, in that very American way she had of changing the subject. "What kind of interviews were you doing that had you out past midnight?"

"If you must know, I was interviewing prostitutes," he told her. "Hence the late hour."

"And you're sure this was for work?" she teased.

"Raven, my darling," he sniped back. "I don't pay for sex."

"It's true," she agreed. "But you're not against _bartering_ with it, especially when it comes to a story."

"That was once!" he protested. "And it was also blown completely out of proportion, I can't believe you're taking _his_ side over mine."

"I was just teasing," she promised, reaching over to give his arm a squeeze. "So what has you so hot over this story anyway?"

"What do you mean?" he asked after another swig of his tea, momentarily distracted when his eyes caught a line from his notes scattered across the table.

When he looked back at Raven, she had a soft, sweet expression on her face, the one that meant she was about to say something absurdly fond. "You can make all the noise you want about what the big guys reward and blah and blah, but I know you. There's something about this story that's got you burning. What is it?"

Charles returned the fond look. "The police think they might have the start of a serial on their hands," he admitted. "There was a young prostitute murdered less than a month ago just a few blocks from this one. They don't know who he is yet but early odds are he was also a sex worker."

"Okay, so people are out killing rent boys," Raven said. "Is that why you're hot on this? Because they were gay?"

"Their customers don't say much about their own sexuality," he informed her. "That's partly the reason, I suppose, but it's more to do with how they made their living. The papers don't care when two hookers are murdered within a month and a few blocks of each other and I doubt the police care much more than that. But they still deserve justice, Raven. They still deserve someone to tell their stories and find out what happened to them."

"Under that completely fake tough exterior, there is nothing but a bleeding heart," she laughed, but it was a kind, sympathetic sound. "Why didn't you become a social worker or a teacher or something?"

He shot her a look. "You know why."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, yes. _Him_."

"I love what I do," he assured her, reaching out to give her hand a squeeze as she'd done to him.

She, however, frowned when she looked down at his hand. "Where's your ring?"

"Oh, that." Charles waved his hand around as if to dismiss her question. "It was actually something I was willing to barter for information. Hopefully, it'll work out."

"Your wedding band?" Raven asked, still incredulous.

"For a marriage that's been over far longer than the marriage itself lasted," he reminded her. "And weren't you the one who wanted me to take it off and move on?"

"I wanted you to take it off five years ago when you signed the divorce papers and Gabrielle moved back to Israel," she shot back. "It's not like this is a sign you're ready to move on."

"Not this again," he sighed. "Raven, I've moved on. I go out, I date, what more proof do you need that I've moved on?"

"Maybe if what you call moving on wasn't all a string of one- and two-night stands," she said, lifting her chin stubbornly.

"You can't seriously think I'm still mooning over Gabrielle?" he asked. "That was a long time ago."

"I don't think this is about Gabrielle," she admitted. "I think it's about being afraid of being hurt again. You won't _invest_."

Charles finished his cool tea in one great gulp, grimacing as it slid down this throat. "I need to take a shower," he stated, rising to his feet and effectively ending the conversation. From the expression on Raven's face, she recognized the tactic and didn't appreciate it. Charles ignored her, however, and headed back upstairs, half-hoping that his rudeness would mean he wouldn't be faced with his sister's pouting expression when he came back down.

The hot shower helped do what the tea hadn't been able to when combined with Raven's scintillating conversational skills and he felt much more human when he stepped out of it. He made a detour on the way to his closet to check his phone for messages; there was nothing from Ray, the pro he'd met, but there was a rather cryptic email from Hank, which wasn't entirely unexpected. Every time the young medical examiner decided to be brave enough to pass on information, he immediately regretted it and started doing everything he could to sway Charles from following up on it.

Charles shot a quick, soothing reply to Hank and made a mental note to follow up with him later. Once he was dressed, he made sure to grab his phone before he headed back downstairs, only to be greeted by the smell of cooking eggs.

"Are you cooking?" he asked Raven as he stepped back into the kitchen to find her at the stove, her hair tied back.

"Yeah," she admitted as she used a spatula to move the eggs she'd scrambled from the frying pan to a plate. "I was hoping it was enough of an apology that I wouldn't have to say it."

The little irritation he had toward her melted at her contrite expression. "All this for showing up uninvited?" he asked, watching as she added a few sausage links and toast to the plate.

"And for the moving on crack," she said, offering him the laden plate. "I'm a little bitchy this morning."

He laughed and gave her a kiss on the forehead before he took the plate from her hands. "I don't think either of us has been in top form today," he said. "Thank you for breakfast and, of course, you're forgiven."

As much as Charles wanted to jump on the bits and pieces of the story he'd gathered the day before, he enjoyed the idle chitchat he and Raven shared over breakfast, at least until he heard the grandfather clock in the living room start to chime the hour.

"I really have to go," he said, standing up from his half-finished breakfast. "I've got to stop by the office before I go out, Moira's agreed to help me and I..."

"I get it, go ahead," Raven said. "I think I'm going to hang for a little longer if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't," he assured her as he reached for his keys and double-checked that he had his phone in his pocket. "Stay as long as you like but, please, don't move my papers, all right?"

"It's a deal," she promised. "Just don't tell him where I am if you see him?"

"Deal," he promised.

Charles decided to eschew the subway for a cab to reach the office and he spent the cab ride over furiously sending off emails to various sources he'd used over the years that might have been able to help him with his current story. Finally, he was stepping out in front of the building and dashing into the first available elevator. Though "the office" wasn't technically _his_ office, most of the reporters and support staff milling around the bullpen recognized him and some even offered greetings as he passed by. Charles didn't slow, however, not until he reached a certain hard-working auburn-haired woman who didn't even bother to look up from her screen until he tapped her on the shoulder.

"Moira," he said.

"Charles," she returned, letting her fingers stop their mad dash across her keyboard. "You said you were onto something and you needed my help?"

"Exactly that," he said.

"And _he_ knows?" Moira asked, glancing significantly toward the office door that bore a plate proclaiming "Brian Xavier, Editor-in-Chief."

"Not yet," he told her. "I'm not sure it's going to pan out yet and you know how he feels about that. I'd like to have something a little more put together before I deal with him." He leaned in a little. "But you'll still help me, yes?"

Moira bit her lip, clearly torn. "I have my own deadlines," she warned him. "I'll help where I can but I can't make any promises, not until you have something we can take to Brian and get clearance. You understand me? I don't want to get chewed out over whatever you're chasing, Charles."

"I completely understand, love," he told her. "I swear, I'll come to you once I have something solid put together. The last thing I want to do is to get my only ally on the staff canned."  
"You're lucky you're a charmer, Xavier," she joked. Then she sighed. "I'll help, but I can't start today."

Charles nodded. "How about we meet tomorrow? I'll let you know if I've made any progress."

"Done," she said. "Now clear out before your dad comes out and catches me conspiring with the enemy."

"I'm not really the enemy," he protested.

Moira just smiled and shooed him away, shaking her head a little as he took the hint and left her to whatever she was working on so intently. Charles spared one last grin in her direction before he dashed toward the elevators, hoping to make a clean break before his father caught him loitering around the office. He would've succeeded, too, except that his father was stepping off the same elevator he'd planned to take down to the lobby.

Brian Xavier favored with him a squinty-eyed look of suspicion. "What are you doing here?"

"Just popping in to say hello," he told him. "Good to see you, Dad."

"Like hell you were," his father replied. "Do you know where your sister is? She's not answering her cell."

"I'm not really at liberty to say," Charles hedged, looking longingly at the elevator as the doors closed without him behind them.

It was answer enough for his father. He nodded. "At least she's not staying without one of the _friends_ of hers."

Charles made a show of checking his watch. "I've really got to go, Dad, I have an appointment," he said, forcing false apology into his voice. "It was good to catch up, though."

Brian mumbled something under his breath, probably something derogatory so Charles was glad he didn't catch it.

"Bye, Dad," he said, as the elevator doors finally opened again and he stepped onto it.

"Don't do anything bloody stupid," his father warned as the doors slid closed, blocking out his disapproving face. "And don't die!"

Charles grinned once the elevator was in descent, knowing that that was as close as his father came to _I love you_.

**

There was nothing more frustrating, Charles reflected later, than chasing a much of leads that didn't pan out, which is how he spent most of his day. By later that afternoon he still hadn't heard from any of the boys he'd spoken to on the street the night before, and his most productive conversation had been with Hank which, point of fact, hadn't been productive at all.

"Hank, _Hank_ ," he'd said, raising his voice as he spoke into his cell phone enough to draw glances from the people passing by where he loitered in the park. "Stop worrying about this. You sent me this information because you know I can help. There's no reason for all this anxiety."

"You don't know Detective Lehnsherr," Hank had replied in a low, hissing tone that meant he was whispering into the receiver. "There's a reason I've never given you anything from one of his cases before. He's _scary_."

"And he's made absolutely no progress on Martin Tabram's case, which is why you told me about the second murder in the first place," Charles had reminded him. He'd spared a moment to wonder if this Lehnsherr was the cop he'd met the night before when he'd been talking to Ray. "Scary or not, he's ineffectual, it seems."

"He's not like that," Hank had said. "He tries. Not like some of them. He's not ignoring this case just because they were prostitutes, not like some around here. He and Detective Muñoz are the good guys."

"Then they deserve my help," Charles had argued. "Anything I uncover, anything that makes the papers, it'll help them. If they're the good guys you say, we're all after the same thing."

"I don't know, Charles," Hank had sighed. "I just don't want to get heat over this."

"I'll be discreet," he'd promised. "I'll never tell anyone that you're my source, you know that."

There had been an uncomfortable silence before the inevitable "How's Raven?" inquiry had detoured them away from murder victims and the thorny ethical dilemma of leaking information about an open police investigation to a freelance reporter and onto depressing topic of Hank's continued pining over Charles's sister, still going strong after a year. Charles tried not to get into the middle of it but he couldn't help but feel bad for Hank who had moved to New York solely because it had brought him closer to Raven, only for the relationship to end within a few months of his relocation.

After he'd calmed down the moping medical examiner, Charles had spent some time at the library, printing off anything he could find that had been written about the Tabram case. It was, as he'd lamented to Raven and Hank, precious little because people just didn't care. Because Tabram had been living on the street, selling his body to support the drug habit he'd fallen into before he was even old enough to drink, most people tended to soothe themselves with the notion that he had deserved his tragic end. That sort of attitude was the exact thing that infuriated Charles the most, especially when he saw it in his colleagues or in law enforcement officers. Everyone deserved justice and turning such derision onto someone who had already suffered so much made Charles blood boil. Raven had been right when she noted there was something about the cases that had gotten his attention and that had been it.

By dinner time, Charles had to face that he hadn't achieved very much and he was left to wait until the next day when he could bounce ideas off Moira or sooner if one of his inquiries turned up someone willing to talk. That left him wired from the adrenaline he got when he was on a new story, but without a real direction to pursue. So he decided to visit a bar he liked, one that was close enough to where Ray worked that if he got a message, he could make it to their designated meeting spot without too much delay. Years before, his favorite little spot would've smelled like smoke, but the slightly stale bite of recycled air was welcoming enough. Charles greeted the bartender, ordered a pint and settled himself at the bar to finish it, until he was distracted by a very lopsided game of pool between two other patrons. After the one man lost rather dismally, he couldn't stop the impulse to offer himself up as the winner's next opponent, which was how he spent the next hour of his time and two rounds of his alcohol.

He and his opponent had just racked up for another game when Charles felt the press of eyes on his back as strongly as if it were a touch. He hadn't noticed anyone earlier that would be watching him with such force so he leaned against the pool table while his opponent lined up his shot and casually scanned the line of the bar and the tables huddled nearby for a sign of his admirer. And he found the culprit, sitting half the bar away, nursing his own beer. Charles thought he looked vaguely familiar -- attractive, lean, with intense eyes and an overall air of a brooder about him -- but it took Charles a moment to realize it was the detective he'd met on the street the night before, the one he had a hunch was the Detective Lehnsherr that Hank was feared so much. When their gazes finally met, Charles offered a quick smile and a small salute with his pool stick before he broke off the staring match and went back to his game.

He was lining up his own shot a few minutes later when he noticed someone -- Lehnsherr -- approach.

It didn't look like the cop was going to speak; he seemed content to lean against the bar with his beer, watching.

Charles took his shot and sank a ball in the left corner pocket before he spoke. "Good evening, Detective," he said, flicking his eyes over at Lehnsherr for a second before he returned his attention to the game.

"Not Officer?" Lehnsherr asked, a low tease in his lightly accented voice.

"Of course not," he replied, leaning down to line up his stick with the cue ball. "Don't think I've forgotten our little meeting last night, Detective Lehnsherr."

Lehnsherr raised an eyebrow. "I didn't mention that last night."

Charles couldn't stop the grin he felt spread over his face. "Yes, well, you're rather popular, yes? I spoke to a few friends and it wasn't hard to put a name to the face."

The detective looked as if he wanted to say something, but his gaze cut toward the man Charles was playing pool against. Charles took the hint, and held out his pool stick toward the man. "I think I'm going to call it a night," he said in apology. "Thanks for the game, though."

The man returned his thanks and wandered off in search of a new opponent while Charles grabbed his beer and caught Lehnsherr's eye. "It seems like you're in the mood for a chat, I thought I'd make it a bit more cozy."

Lehnsherr didn't reply immediately but he took an empty seat at the bar and Charles followed, sliding into the one next to him. Once Charles was settled, the detective spoke again. "Who filled you in?"

Charles shrugged. "Friends, here and there."

"Lexi?" he asked. "Or maybe Amber?"

"Do names really matter?" Charles asked with another grin. He wasn't certain who Lexi and Amber were, but they certainly weren't Hank, which was all that mattered. He'd meant it when he'd said he'd protect his friend from the supposedly frightening Detective Lehnsherr. Not that Charles found him particularly frightening -- attractive, yes, and a little rough, but wholly appealing. It wouldn't be a chore to talk over a few drinks and figure out if the detective knew something about the cases that Hank hadn't known to pass on.

"I find they make things easier," the detective said. "What's yours?"

"Charles," he answered. "What about you? I'm fairly certain 'detective' isn't your given name."

"Erik," he said in return. "You're not the only one who remembers our meeting last night."

"There's nothing worse than being forgettable," Charles told him.

The detective -- Lehnsherr -- _Erik_ snorted at that, trying to hide his amusement behind his glass. "I'm betting it's not a problem you have."

"I've been told I make an impression, yes," he agreed, still smiling.

"You do," the detective nodded. "In fact you left me with the impression last night that you knew more than you were letting on when I asked."

"It's to be an interrogation, is it?" Charles asked with a laugh, genuinely amused by the synchronicity. It seemed they had the same thing in mind. "We'll need something stronger for that." He motioned for the bartender's attention and then signaled for two doubles, mouthing "Scotch" at the man's inquiring head tilt.

"Nothing so formal," Erik said, watching as the bartender delivered the alcohol Charles had requested, one for him and the other for the detective. He picked it up and tasted it. "Just a friendly chat."

"That's what you say _now_ ," Charles said, enjoying the smooth burn of his drink. "And I could say the same of you. You haven't been very forthright about what you know."

Erik favored him with something approximately a grin, although it showed a few too many teeth. "Asking questions is my job," he said.

"Oh, mine, too," Charles reminded him.

"I think you're asking different questions," Erik told him.

Charles finished his drink, and ordered another round for both of them. "I'd say better ones."

That earned him another snort of amusement. "I bet."

Charles turned a little on the stool for a better view of the detective, where he sat hunched over his drink. "I'm honestly willing to chat about any mundane topic you'd like. We could trade stories about our childhoods, for example."

"Really? Our childhoods?"

"Are you going to tell me about the case you're working?"

"No."

"Then, certainly, childhood is a safe enough topic," Charles stated. It wasn't his best investigative technique, but waiting a source out and plying them with alcohol had had its successes in the past and he didn't mind spending a few hours with Detective Lehnsherr. "I'll even go first."

Erik looked torn between walking away and giving in to Charles's conversational gambit. Charles gave him another smile and watched as resignation settled over the cop's features. "So you're British?"

"You wouldn't believe American as apple pie?" Charles teased.

"Not hardly," he said, finishing his second drink.

Charles quickly signaled for another round. "My parents liked to travel," he explained with a shrug. "And what about you? I don't think I'm the only one here with an accent."

"Touché," Erik said, lifting his glass in a subtle mockery of a toast. The other hand, the one closest to Charles rested against the bar, one finger tapping against it in what he took as a nervous habit. "My mother and I emigrated from East Germany back in the '80s."

"Defected?" Charles asked, although he was relatively sure of the answer.

The finger tapping sped up, drawing Charles's eyes back to the long fingers. "She was a pianist."

That information, plus his name, clicked in Charles's head. "Edie Lehnsherr," he said. At the detective's surprised look, he added, "I'm not completely uncivilized."

"Yes."

"Do you play?" Charles heard himself asking. He couldn't stop himself from running a finger down the line of Erik's hand, letting his own linger over Erik's to still the idle tapping. "You have the hands for it."

Charles hadn't realized how close he'd leaned in until he looked up and saw that Erik's face wasn't very far from his own, his pale eyes watching Charles as if they were searching for something. He could've ignored the flutter he felt from that intense inspection but he didn't really see the need, not when he was pleasantly buzzed and very interested. He had a feeling that there was a lot he could learn from Erik Lehnsherr, only some of which had to do with the story he was working.

Erik held his gaze for a moment, alcohol-scented breath hot against Charles's cheek before the detective pulled back, muttering something that sounded a lot like, "I'm not drunk enough for this."

It sounded like capitulation or perhaps a challenge; Charles was good with both. He settled on his stool, but remained leaning in, head resting on his hand, elbow propped up on the bar. "Well that's something we can change, isn't it?" he said, laughter lurking in voice. "Bartender!"

The next hour -- or so -- passed in a pleasant, hazy blur of inane conversation that Charles couldn't help but enjoy. It started off as a cat-and-mouse game of unimportant, anonymous details, each waiting for the other to slip, but it eventually slurred into something more openly flirtatious and less about strategic coyness, so much so that Charles went whole quarters-of-an-hour without even a thought of the murders he was supposed to be gleaning information about. Not that he said much about himself beyond the bare minimum, more deflection than anything, whenever Erik turned the questioning on him. Thankfully, the detective didn't seem in the mood to press for details and Charles was allowed to remain a man of mysterious means and occupation, which suited him fine.

As much as he'd like the look of Erik when they'd first met, Charles was quickly starting to like _Erik_ \-- the sly humor under the flinty exterior, the subtle upward curve of his real smile, the way his pale blue eyes trailed down to Charles's mouth every so often before he guiltily caught himself. Charles wasn't exactly sure how many drinks it had taken, but he eventually reached a point where whatever inhibitions he might've had about propositioning a potential source was the only faintest of concerns in the back of his mind, especially when the arm he draped over Erik's shoulder was allowed to remain there without a hint of reproach.

"Do you know what would make this chat even cozier?" Charles asked, as if hours of conversation hadn't passed since the point was first raised.

"What?" Erik asked, running a finger along the rim of his empty glass.

"If we went somewhere cozier to have it," Charles suggested. "I think Ken there is getting a bit tired of us."

Erik's eyebrow rose at the invitation and Charles decided it was a very nice look on him, not that he'd found a look that wasn't nice on the detective that evening. "Are you seriously inviting me back to your place?"

Charles was inebriated but he wasn't so far gone that he didn't remember the squatter he had back at his brownstone. "Hmm, mine is a little occupied, I'm afraid," he told him. "But I wouldn't be averse to visiting yours."

It was the first time since the hard liquor had started flowing that Erik looked conflicted. Charles waited him out, but had prepared himself for the coming rebuff when Erik finally answered. "All right."

"Just all right?" Charles laughed, sliding off the bar stool to steady himself on his feet. "How flattering."

"Charles." It was the first time Erik had addressed him by his name all evening, which he did as he reached out and wrapped those long fingers Charles had so admired around his wrist. "It's just..."

Charles tugged his bound wrist -- not to get away but to bring Erik to his feet as well. The detective stumbled a little in the attempt, but he came to his feet, pressed close where they stood between the bar stools. "None of that, darling. Come on."

The cool air of the late night helped clear Charles's head up enough to realize that even if his detective friend had drove to reach the bar, neither of them were in any shape to drive. "We'll have to get a cab," he said aloud. When he didn't receive an immediate reply, he glanced over at Erik, concerned. His companion was looking a little lost, as if he couldn't quite believe or understand what was happening.

"I haven't misread this, have I?" Charles asked. "The last few hours have been a prelude to something that ends in your bed, yes? If I'm wrong, there are no hard feelings."

Charles was almost entirely certain he wasn't wrong; a man didn't stare at his mouth the way Erik had for the last hour if he wasn't thinking about the indecent things he could do with it, but it never hurt to be absolutely sure.

Suddenly, Erik looked determined instead of lost, a change Charles appreciated, especially when it led to Erik's mouth against his, demanding entrance with his insistent tongue. Charles didn't protest, pulling him closer by the lapels of his coat as Erik's hand skimmed beneath Charles's to press against the curve of his spine just above the waistband of his slacks.

"I'm going to take that as a no," Charles said when Erik finally gave him a chance to breath. He knew he was panting a little, a terribly triumphant grin on his face, as Erik nodded. "Now, let's see about that taxi."

 _End of Part 2_


	3. Chapter 3

It was the second time that week that Erik had been pulled begrudgingly from sleep by the sound of his cell phone ringing and he didn't face its intrusion into his dreams that morning any better than he'd faced it a few days before. That morning, however, it was much harder to make the ringing _stop_ because his phone wasn't in its usual place on his nightstand -- it was across the room, still in the pocket of his pants where they lay crumpled on the floor near the door.

"What?" he demanded, rubbing at his pounding head with his free hand. He had one hell of a headache, and the details of the night before were still shrouded behind a haze of pain and sleepiness.

"Where are you?" Darwin asked, not ruffled by Erik's less-than-enthusiastic greeting.

"What do you mean?" he asked, bending over to rescue his slacks from the floor. He wasn't the neatest bachelor around, but he was usually a little more considerate of his suits since they weren't exactly cheap. Erik tossed them over a chair while he waited for Darwin's answer.

"You're not there and it's way past your usual time," Darwin explained. "I mean, technically you're not late for regular people but you _are_ kinda running behind for Erik Lehnsherr, badass detective. I thought maybe something had come up."

"No, I..." Erik wasn't sure if it was the question itself that made him trail off or the fact that he was starting to notice details about his surroundings that didn't quite add up. Like the striped shirt over his dresser that definitely wasn't his, or the fact his robe was missing from the back of the door to the ensuite or the fact that he was standing in the middle of his bedroom naked.

"Ah, I got it, man," Darwin continued, as if he didn't notice Erik's sudden silence. "Another night on the street, talking to the hookers, huh? I bet you _did_ need the extra sleep."

It was the comment about the prostitutes that made it all start to slide into place. "I'll be there shortly," he said, cutting off the rest of what Darwin was about to say.

"Yeah, but first, I need to tell you --"

Erik snapped the cell phone closed and threw it down on the dresser where it slid across the familiar striped shirt that definitely wasn't his but certainly, he realized with every more horror, belonged to exactly who he thought it did. It sat there accusingly but obligingly, jogging his memory enough that last night started to rush back.

 _Mein Gott._

He'd went to that bar hoping to catch a break but he hadn't expected to run into one of the hustlers he'd met the night before, and he definitely hadn't expected to find himself charmed by his flirty conversation and big blue eyes. But Erik had left their initial meeting thinking that the boy -- Charles, as he knew now -- had known more than he'd been letting on that first night, and he'd hoped that a few drinks and some light conversation would've won him enough trust that Charles would've felt safe confiding in him, perhaps leading him closer to finding out who'd killed Martin Tabram and John Doe.

He _hadn't_ expected it to lead to him stumbling into a taxi with a charming and surprisingly witty _hooker_ for a drunken fuck.

Except that had been exactly what he'd done.

Erik sank down on the edge of his bed, burying his head in his hands to muffle the litany of German -- _fuck, fuck, so fucking stupid_ \-- coming out of his mouth. There was so much wrong with what he'd done; not only had he screwed with someone that might've been important to his case, he'd become one of those cops he hated, the ones who used their authority to victimize whoever they wanted. When he'd worked Vice, he'd known the cops who did the rounds where the pros advertised, who dragged them off and forced the girls to service them to escape the rap -- sometimes even arresting them anyway. He'd always hated those assholes and now he was one of them; even if he hadn't use any particular coercion -- and he was almost certain he hadn't -- he'd approached Charles, asking questions that he obviously hadn't wanted to answer. Given what Erik's thoughts had wandered to after a few drinks, it probably hadn't been hard for Charles to figure out he was interested.

And he had been interested. Way more interested than he'd been in anyone in a long time, which was the most ironic thing of all.

It only took Erik a minute or two of self-castigation before his mind leaped to more immediate concerns, like the fact that Charles's clothes were still strewn about his room but Charles was nowhere to be found. He quickly ran through a check of the essentials -- even though his phone hadn't made it out of his pants, his service piece had made it to its place in the nightstand drawer, seemingly untouched by anyone but himself, and his wallet, which hadn't made it out of his pants, was still intact, along with all its contents. His badge was still clipped to his belt even though it was half-way beneath the bed, and he was mostly certain his keys were probably by the door, especially since they'd left his vehicle at the bar.

That just left him with the mystery of where Charles himself was.

A peek in the bathroom revealed no errant house guest, so Erik grabbed a pair of sweats and padded down the hall. The living room was similarly empty -- and his keys _were_ in the dish by the front door -- but he hit the jackpot when he rounded the corner into his kitchen.

There, sitting at his table was Charles, hair slightly damp as if he'd taken a shower and wrapped in Erik's robe, which hung on him a little loosely and long in the hem and sleeves. There was a cup of some steaming liquid at his elbow on the table which Erik's nose told him wasn't coffee, and he had the morning paper spread out in front of him.

He looked up from the paper when Erik cleared his throat. "Oh, good morning," Charles said, smiling and pleasant, completely unashamed. "I hope you don't mind me making myself at home, but you looked like you needed the sleep, so I didn't want to disturb you."

Charles was just as tempting to Erik sober and in the light of morning as he'd been the night before, mussed hair, soft features and smiling red mouth just as he'd recalled. There was a line of faint red marks on his collarbone, just visible from where the robe's neck dipped open, and Erik remembered leaving them on the pale column of Charles's throat as Charles had murmured soft seductive things in his ear before he'd dropped to his knees to prove that his obscene finger-sucking demonstration had nothing on his actual skills. Erik recalled other things too -- pressing lube-slick fingers into him and wondering if it were possible to come just from the keening sound Charles made as Erik opened him up; how good it had felt to finally be moving inside him, the sting of Charles's blunt nails digging into his shoulders a welcome counterpoint to the pleasure; and, then the wet, slick union of their mouths as he'd come, each kiss fading into the next long after the high of orgasm had begun to pass...

"Erik?"

The echo of Charles repeating his name finally brought Erik back to the moment. "What did you say?" he asked.

"I said I hoped I hadn't overstepped my bounds by making use of your facilities," Charles said, the question in his words clear.

"No, it's fine," Erik replied, still a little distracted by the path of this thoughts. "Although I would've liked my robe when I got up."

Charles's smile was devilish, as his hands trailed to the belt of the robe. "I could return it now if you'd like?"

"No," Erik said firmly, trying to cover the tremor in his voice with completely fake nonchalance. At Charles's raised eyebrow, he realized he must've failed, coming off more panicked than he'd hoped. "It's just that I'm running late for work," he added.

Charles narrowed his eyes a little like he was trying to get a read on him, but Erik kept his face impassive until Charles relented. "Well, we can't have that, can we? I'll just...collect my things and be on my way." He gave Erik one last inscrutable look before he disappeared back down the hall, tucking his phone into the pocket of Erik's purloined robe as he skirted by.

Erik stared into the space where Charles had just vacated, trying to steady his wild thoughts. He'd never been one for one-night-stands because he hadn't like the awkwardness and regrets that came in the morning and he'd saddled himself with more of them than he could've ever imagined by sleeping with a hustler that might be related to one of his active cases. Erik thought back over the last few minutes of conversation, lingering on the look Charles had sent him before he'd headed back to the bedroom for his clothes.

Before he'd expected it, Charles had rejoined him in the kitchen as he finished getting dressed, smoothing the collar of his shirt, then fiddling with the band of his watch as he clasped it around his wrist. He hadn't bothered with the shirt cuffs, and they were half-rolled, half-pushed up to reveal the pale line of his forearms. He leaned against the wall and watched Erik for a moment. "So if there's nothing else...?"

"Your coat?" he asked, because he distinctly remembered that Charles had worn a heavy tan coat on both nights he'd seen him.

"It's by the door," Charles explained, looking amused as he added, "with my shoes."

"Okay, then."

"Yes," Charles sighed, shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. "Exactly."

"Goodbye," Erik said when Charles didn't move from his spot. "It was..."

"Apparently," Charles answered. He finally looked away with another sigh. "Goodbye, Erik."

It came to Erik in a flash as Charles turned away that all of the expectant hemming and hawing Charles had done in the last few minutes probably had something to do with the fact that he wasn't just a drunken mistake -- he was a drunken mistake who usually got _paid_ for his services.

Erik knew it was his guilt that even made him consider it, to make what was probably one of the stupidest things he'd ever done in his life into something even more ridiculous and horrifying, but he already felt bad enough for taking advantage of the authority his badge gave him over Charles. He didn't want to cost him a night's worth of work and let him think Erik considered it payment for his silence.

"Charles, wait," he called out, leaning around the edge of the open kitchen door to see Charles pause where he was slipping on his shoes.

"Yes?" he asked, glancing up.

"I know we didn't talk about...terms beforehand," Erik began, rushing over the words. "But I'd be glad to meet whatever...your usual is."

"My usual?"

"For the night, I mean," he explained. "Whatever you usually get for...everything."

Charles knitted his brow, obviously thinking about something before his face lit up with shock. "So you want to pay me...my usual rate, you say?"

Erik ignored the guilt that told him that that look meant Charles _had_ considered it some kind of trade to earn him a break from police interrogation. "I'm sure I have the cash," he told him, although he winced when he realized he probably didn't.

Another indecipherable expression flickered over his face too fast for Erik to take the measure of it, but it struck him as odd that someone with such expressive eyes could be so unfathomable in the span of a few minutes. He was surprised again when Charles spoke again, as he slid his arms into the sleeves of his coat. "Don't worry about it," he told him. "You can consider last night...on the house."

"No, I..." Erik began but then Charles had opened the front door that led out into the hall of his building and it wasn't a conversation he wanted to have where others could here.

"And don't worry," Charles added as he stepped outside, buttoning his coat. "If I think of anything, I'll let you know."

Erik flinched at the sound of the door slamming shut behind him.

He might've stood there for hours, mulling over his own guilt and embarrassment except that the annoying tinny sound of his ringing cell phone broke him out of his reverie. He rolled his eyes as he strode down the hall and grabbed for it, this time checking the ID to see that it was Darwin.

"I told you I'd be there as soon as I can," he said into the phone.

"And I tried to tell you that Frost is looking for you," Darwin replied. "So you better hoof it, brother."

Erik felt his headache returning in full force. "Stall her," he ordered. "I'll be there in twenty minutes. And you better have me some coffee this time."

He dropped the phone on the nightstand and grabbed his robe from where it lay across his disheveled bed as he hurried to the shower, trying not to think of where it had been -- and on whom -- just minutes before.

**

Charles took the entire journey home to ponder what had just happened, but the proper reaction to it eluded him. It played out in his memory like a terrible farce; he knew he'd been deliberately obtuse and rather shamelessly _accommodating_ in their conversation the night before, but the former wasn't unusual when he was fishing for information for a story and the latter was very much his way when he was interested in someone. But never had he expected that their first meeting, combined with his artful caginess, would've caused Erik to peg him as a _street hustler_.

By the time the taxi was pulling up in front of his brownstone, Charles still hadn't decided how he felt about the entire thing, though there was some amusement bubbling to the surface, smoothing over the wounded edges of hurt he couldn't quite ignore. Information or no, he had liked Erik and had hoped that he would've at least been up for a repeat performance of their night together. Charles could not have imagined, however, that the best he'd get was an offer to pay for services rendered.

When he quietly let himself in to his own home, he could smell the hot-sharp scent of coffee wafting from the kitchen, which told him Raven hadn't returned to their family home the night before and she was already up and about. He found her in the living room in front of his flat-screen TV, watching some kind of morning talk program while she curled up on his sofa with her coffee.

"I hope you at least called him," he said in lieu of a greeting as he shrugged out of his coat and threw it over one of the chairs. "He asked about you the moment he saw me yesterday."

In the past, he might've asked about the cause of this latest riff between his sister and their father, but he'd learned over the years that it was rarely about anything other than their fundamental personality differences no matter what trivial thing they'd wrapped it up in for the moment.

"The same could be said for you," Raven told him, glancing up over the back of the sofa. "You could've let me know you weren't coming back last night."

Charles rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. "I hadn't really planned my absence ahead of time."

Raven snorted. "You never do."

He rolled his eyes. "Did you call him?"

She sighed and sat her cup down on the coffee table. "I left a message with Amy," she admitted. "She said she'd give it to him before he left work for the day."

"Good enough," he said with a nod. "You shouldn't worry him if you don't have to."

"You mean unlike you?" Raven asked, reaching up to motion for him to join her on the sofa. "Come here, don't make me strain my neck to look at you."

"I don't worry him if I can help it," he pointed out, giving in to her suggestion. He spared a moment to be glad he'd taken the chance to shower before he'd left Erik's when she immediately snuggled up to him as soon as he was sitting. "Even when we're at odds, I check in with him or Moira if I'm working on something where I might run into trouble."

"Which is how they knew something was up when you'd been arrested that time," she reminded him with a laugh.

He laughed, too, remembering his night spent in lock-up over a little matter of B&E. "Yes, exactly. And that's where his mind goes, you know. He immediately thinks the worst."

"Speaking of the worst..." Raven made a show of wrinkling her nose in the direction of his rumpled shirt. "What happened with you last night? I thought you were working on that story, not cruising for a pick-up."

"I was -- working a story, I mean," he said, though not sure how to elaborate on how it had led to the evening he'd had. Charles wasn't sure he was ready to share the humiliating truth when anyone just yet, not even his beloved sister. Still, he heard himself asking her, "Raven, if you saw me on a street corner at night, would you necessarily jump to the conclusion that I was a prostitute?"

Raven drew back a little so that she could peer into his face. He tried to keep his expression bland, but Charles knew she could see through him easily. "Oh my god, did someone...?" She trailed off, overcome with laughter. "Oh my _god_ , they did, didn't they? Someone tried to pick you up when you were doing interviews!"

"It's not as funny as all that," he complained between her gales of laughter, but her amusement did ease some of his own wounded feelings. "Honestly, Raven!"

"I'm sorry," she said, raising her face from where she'd buried it against his shoulder in a vain attempt to smother her mirth. "But, Charles, it really is as funny as that all. If it hadn't happened to you, you'd be laughing with me." She looped her arms around his neck in a comforting embrace, still pressed close where they sat together on the sofa. "I hope he offered you what you were worth and none of that $50 blowjob nonsense," she teased. "Given your experience, you've got to go for at least three times that."

It was a wicked and wildly inappropriate thing to even wonder about, but Charles couldn't help but wish he'd known what Erik had been willing to pay to meet his "usual rate." "You are a horrible person, my dear sister."

"You love me," she disagreed with a quick smack of her lips against his cheek. Raven seemed to consider something because she was more serious when she asked, "You weren't in danger, were you?"

Charles slung an arm over her. "I was perfectly safe," he assured her. He thought about the scans he'd taken of Erik's notes on the cases that were currently residing on his phone's memory card. "It...all worked out in the end, I guess you could say."

"I can only imagine how embarrassed that guy was when you broke it to him," she said. "Too bad it wasn't someone you could use it against."

"Raven, I am not an extortionist," he told her. "Your opinion of my profession seems to be so low that I might as well be turning tricks for all the respect it gets me."

She waved away his objection. "I've seen what you're willing to do to get the story, Charles, especially when you think it's important. Ruthless isn't even the word."

Charles was about to object _again_ when he noticed the time where it flashed across the bottom of the television screen. "As much as I'd love to sit here and let you cast aspersions upon me, I have an early lunch meeting with Moira that I need to prepare for." He wanted another shower, along with clean clothes and a chance to print off hard copies of the digital files on his phone.

Raven grumbled at the loss but she didn't protest too much as he untangled himself from her arms. "I'll probably be staying here tonight, too," she told him. "Do you want to have dinner?"

"I don't know what my plans are going to be," he admitted. "But I'll call? Either way, I'll check in with you."

She nodded, apparently satisfied with the compromise. "Have fun with Moira."

Charles answered with a wave, not bothering with a verbal reply when he was already preoccupied with how he'd present what he had so far to Moira in a few hours. He was fairly certain that she'd be as interested as he was in the possible serial angle, but it never hurt to have a plan of persuasion in place, just in case he needed it.

They were scheduled to meet at a little deli not far from the paper and Charles arrived right on time, bright-eyed, without any sign of the rough night he'd passed. The second shower had helped, as had the time he'd spent re-immersing himself in the facts of the story instead of letting himself continue to wallow in self-pity.

When he noticed Moira in the back of the deli, he did a double take when he saw she wasn't alone.

"Sean?" It came out as half-greeting, half-question.

"Hey, Charles," the redhead said, grinning up at him over his sandwich.

"Not that it isn't lovely to see him but what's he doing here?" he asked Moira as he took the remaining seat at the table.

She shrugged, wiping her fingers on her napkin. "He said he was interested in helping, I figured you could use all of it you could get."

Charles shot him a look of warning but didn't protest, even though he was almost sure that Sean's offer was less about helping Charles than it was finding a way to spend more time with Moira. Still, he'd liked Sean since he'd come to work at the paper a year ago and if the young man wanted to waste his time helping them out so he could make time with Moira despite her obliviousness to his interest, Charles wasn't going to deny him the opportunity.

Once he'd gotten his own lunch, Charles kept his voice low as he filled in Moira and Sean on what he'd learned so far and what he wanted to look into next.

"Our John Doe's identity is paramount," he told them firmly. "The police have hit a dead end too and I think it's going to shed a lot of light on what's going on."

"Any idea on how to go about it when the cops can't find anything?" Moira asked.

He nodded and produced two newly-printed copies of John Doe's morgue photo. "You still have those contacts with those sex worker outreach programs from that report you did last summer, yes?"

Moira nodded. "Maria and Julian."

"I was hoping you could get them to help us by showing this photo around," he explained, handing her one. "I've tried it and the cops have too but it won't be the same coming from someone they trust. And wasn't Maria's outreach close to our murder scene?"

"It used to be," she said with a frown. "But they had to move it since I interviewed them. I'm not sure where it moved to."

"Why?" Charles asked.

Moira's frown deepened. "Why else? Cops casing the place and giving the girls a hard time. It got to be where they were scared to come to the outreach which defeated the whole purpose."

"Not all cops are like that, Moira," Charles reminded her, unable to stop himself from thinking of Erik, of the way Hank had defended him to Charles before they'd met. "There are some good ones out there."

"If you say so," she said and then went back to flipping through the scans of the police reports Charles had lifted from Erik's place. "How did you even _get_ these?"

Charles couldn't help the self-deprecating smile. "You really don't want to know."

"We could go to print with just this, really," Moira said, turning another page. "Possible serial killer, police left baffled, et cetera. I think even Brian would admit it's good."

"This isn't just about the story, Moira," Charles reminded her. "I want to find who did this. I'd rather go after that."

"I'm with you, Charles, I'm just saying we need to take something to Brian and I think you could pitch this," she said. "Maybe it'll even rattle some cages."

"I'll draft something and see if I can make it work," he said. "But I'm more interested in finding out something the police don't know, like who John Doe is."

"What do you need me to do, Charles?" Sean asked.

"I want you on background, if you don't mind," he said. "Just because these are the first two murders they've linked, doesn't mean there wasn't something before or that our murderer hasn't escalated from something else. Maybe there's something the police has missed."

"Oh, great, a library project," Sean groaned, but it was good-natured and he flashed a smile to show he was teasing.

"An accountant brought down Al Capone," Charles teased. "Maybe you'll catch a murderer."

Moira opened her cell phone and grimaced when her eyes landed on the time. "I've really got to get back," she said, half-apologetic. "Can I keep these?"

"Yes, those are for you," he said. "Thank you, for all your help."

"I'll let you know if I hear anything from Maria and Julian," she promised. "I'll fax the photo to them this afternoon." She stood, smoothing down her skirt before she collected her copies of the files. "I hope you've got this source on call," she told him, patting the papers in her hand. "We could use more like this if we're going to stay ahead of the cops."

Charles knew it was probably horrible of him, but there was a plan forming in his head. "I'm not sure yet," he admitted. "But...I'm working on it."

**

 _End of Part 3_


	4. Chapter 4

Emma wasn't exactly thrilled when Erik finally showed up in her office after half a morning of evasion, but Darwin had laid some good groundwork to explain his late arrival because she was only mildly annoyed instead of well and truly pissed. Darwin had also made sure that coffee and aspirin were waiting for Erik at his desk and he turned it over with minimal mockery, again proving to Erik that the best thing he'd ever done for himself was taking Darwin on as his partner when he'd first made detective.

"I wanted an update on the John Doe -- two hours ago," Frost snapped when he asked about why she'd been looking for him. "Muñoz was able to give me a general idea but I really wanted to hear it from you, Lehnsherr. You _are_ the lead detective on it."

"I got distracted following up some leads," Erik lied smoothly, without even a hint of remorse. It was probably the first thing he'd done that morning that hadn't hit him with some. "But if you want to hear it again, I'll tell you what Darwin did: we're still trying to figure out who he is and we're taking a second look at the forensics because right now there's nothing to go on."

"There's never _nothing_ ," she retorted. "There's always something and I'm expecting you to find it and quickly. I'd like to get this case and the Tabram one off our plates as soon as possible."

"Wouldn't we all?" Erik deadpanned. He shook his head, both in confusion and to help clear out some of the post-hangover fuzziness. "I'm just wondering what's suddenly made this case different than all the other ones I've worked in the past five years?"

Erik had asked mostly on instinct, picking up on some barely-discernable tension that had his normally icy-veined captain vibrating in her desk chair, but he knew he was onto something when she visibly started at his question.

Frost glared at him, leaning forward a little to look as menacing as possible. It might've worked on Darwin or some of the other rookies, but Erik was largely immune after their half-decade together. "It's not, which means I need you doing your job to the best of your ability as quickly as possible because while you're dicking around trying to figure out who's murdering prostitutes in the Bronx, people are still killing each other all over the place. Those murders need to be solved too."

When the phone on her desk began to ring, they both glared at it.

"Get out," she ordered. "I have to take this call."

He stood up to leave but not without a parting shot. "I'm doing the best I can," he told her. "You think someone else could do it better, you send them my way." When he looked back after he'd stepped out of her office, she was still giving him that same dark look and he barely resisted the urge to flip her off.

"That good, huh?" Darwin asked when Erik reached the desk where his partner was waiting and Darwin got the effect of his glower.

"She's just flexing her claws, although I don't know why," Erik replied. He leaned against the desks and crossed his arms. "She's right about one thing, though. We need some traction on this case and fast."

"There's nothing new from Hank or from forensics yet," Darwin informed him. "I checked this morning."

Erik sighed and sank down into his chair, eyes roaming over the stacks of files on his desk. "Let's just run through this again, maybe something will hit us."

"Sure thing," Darwin said, pulling up something on his computer with a few key strokes. "Okay, so the call came in around 3AM when our friends Penhall and Hanson see the vic in the alley on a routine sweep."

"No witnesses."

"Right."

"No noises, no neighbors hearing or seeing anything?"

"Not that would admit it to a cop," Darwin answered.

"Yeah." Erik sighed again. "What's next?"

"Penhall calls it in, Azazello takes it. He's next on the scene."

"Huh." Azazello was far from Erik's favorite person on the force but there was a chance that the detective had seen something on the scene when he'd responded that had been gone by the time Erik had arrived amid swarming uniforms and a team of CSU technicians. "I should've probably talked to him before now."

Darwin shrugged. "Maybe but I have my doubts that he could find his way out of a paper bag."

Erik bit back the grin he wanted to let loose at Darwin's comment. Instead he scanned the bullpen until his gaze found Azazello across the room, talking to a uniform he didn't recognize. "Hey, Azazello!" he shouted. "Got a minute?"

The other detective didn't look overjoyed at the prospect but he nodded his agreement then turned to finish his conversation with the other officer. While he waited, Erik thumbed through his text messages and even checked his extension's voicemail. Finally, Azazello made his over to Erik's desk. "You want something, Lehnsherr?" he asked, his Russian accent far more pronounced than the faint strains of mother tongue still left in Erik's.

"Just wanted to ask you a few questions about that John Doe case," Erik said.

Azazello shrugged. "Frost gave it to you, so what about it?"

"You were the first detective on the scene," Darwin pointed out. "We were hoping you saw something that we might've missed later."

Azazello shrugged again. "There wasn't much to see. Dead hooker in an alley. Not the first, probably not the last."

"We don't know what he was because we don't even know who he is," Erik told him with a dark look. "So I'd appreciate it if you'd spare a moment to actually think about the damn question we're asking you."

Azazello returned the Erik's obvious irritation with some of his own. "Look, there wasn't anything to see. Dead h---guy, stab wounds, a few blocks from that last one, I called Frost and she said to bump it to you guys. I was barely there five minutes before McCoy showed up."

"Really?" Erik narrowed his eyes. "You noticed nothing of importance?"

Azazello rolled his eyes and leaned in, lowering his voice for Erik and Darwin's ears only. "Look, Lehnsherr, just because you've got a soft spot for hookers or whatever doesn't mean the rest of us are wasting our time with them."

For a ridiculous, heart-stopping second Erik thought Azazello had somehow found out by the interesting night he'd had with Charles before he realized the other detective was just an arrogant asshole. "Nobody deserves to be gutted and left in an alley, Azazello. Our job is to find the bastard that did _that_ , not turn our backs on the vic because maybe he did something you didn't like."

Azazello straightened up. "Sorry I couldn't be more help," he said, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. "But I've got my own cases to handle."

As soon as he'd walked away, Darwin made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. "Like I said, he couldn't detect his way out of a paper bag."

"It was worth a try," Erik said, although he agreed with Darwin. "Anyone else we can shake down in case we've missed something?"

"Not that I can think of, but I got an email while Azazello was over here. It's from McCoy and one of the CSU guys," Darwin revealed. "They've spotted another difference between Tabram and our John Doe. Forensics says Tabram bled out at the scene but there's no evidence of it for the John Doe."

"So he was probably dumped there instead of stabbed there?" Erik asked.

Darwin nodded. "That's what McCoy is supposing. Given the stab wounds, there would've been blood spatter if he'd been attacked there."

"Which makes me wonder if this is actually a possible serial or if it's a copycat," Erik told him.

"We still need to know more," Darwin said.

"Yeah, we do." Erik stood up and motioned for Darwin to do the same. "Let's go."

"Where to?" Darwin wanted to know, even as he grabbed his coat and followed.

"Might as well give the neighborhood another try in case someone has decided catching a murder is worth the risk of being seen cooperating with the police."

"You really are an optimist, aren't you?" Darwin said, grinning at the startled look Erik gave him.

"Shut up and let's go," Erik told him. "We need to swing by and pick up my car on the way."

They pounded the pavement for several hours, but no one who might've heard anything the night of the murder was changing their story from the party line that no one heard or saw anything. Erik supposed that the murderer could've managed to dump the body without anyone seeing, but it felt like a stretch, even if it had happened between midnight and 2AM.

His day had been frustrating but it had been busy, which had kept Erik from dwelling too much on the angst from the morning and Erik had been grateful for the distraction. As he drove home, though, Erik knew that the silence and emptiness waiting for him at his apartment would mean that he'd have nothing better to do than to think the stupid stunt he'd pulled the night before.

What he hadn't expected was to find _Charles_ actually waiting by his door.

It was apparent that he'd been loitering there awhile by the way Charles winced ever so slightly as he straightened up from his lean against the wall. "I was wondering if I'd have to try again tomorrow," Charles said, smiling a little tentatively as he met Erik's shocked gaze.

"My job isn't exactly known for regular hours," Erik heard himself say.

Charles let out a huff of laughter. "Neither is mine."

Despite being fully aware of how stupid he'd been the night before, Erik couldn't deny that the attraction was still there. Charles was again dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, though the first two buttons were undone, revealing a line of pale skin and the faintest hint of a reddish mark that Erik was pretty sure he'd left the night before. "What are you doing here?" he finally managed to ask past the lump in his throat.

"I was hoping to talk to you," Charles said. "May I come in?"

Erik didn't really think it was the best idea he'd ever had, but he nodded anyway, blaming his weakness on the imploring way Charles watched him unlock the door with his big blue eyes. "Fine, come in."

He dropped his keys on the table by the door as he walked in, waiting until Charles took a few steps into his living room to close the front door behind him. Erik watched Charles look around the living room for a minute or two before he finally asked, "What did you want to talk to me about?"

Charles turned to face him, coat tucked under his arm. "I think we've gotten ourselves on the wrong foot and I wanted to straighten it out."

"There's really nothing to straighten out."

"Yes, there is," Charles insisted. "I need you to...Erik, please." Charles's gaze was still imploring and hard to resist. "I just wanted to make it clear that last night -- it wasn't about my job or yours, all right? I came home with you because I wanted to. That's all there was to it."

Erik tried to let himself feel better at Charles's declaration but it didn't really relieve his guilt the way it should've. "That's good to know, Charles, now..."

"And you were right the other night," Charles continued as if Erik hadn't tried to speak. "Well, not really but you weren't far off."

"What are you talking about?" Erik asked.

"You said you thought I knew more than I was saying about that murder," Charles explained. "I didn't, not really, but I was _hoping_ to learn more."

"You were out asking questions, too," Erik realized.

Charles nodded. "I wanted to see if anyone knew anything."

Erik couldn't ignore how uneasy the thought made him, that Charles was out there putting himself in more danger when there seemed to be a killer out on the street preying on pretty available boys. "That's not a good idea," he told him. "You could draw attention you don't need."

"No more than you, walking the street with your gun and your badge," Charles shot back. "That's actually why I'm here, Erik. I want to help you."

"With what, the investigation?" At Charles's slight nod, Erik shook his head. "No. _Hell_ no."

"Just listen to me for a moment," Charles said, gaze narrowing at Erik's immediate denial. "You need my help."

"No, I don't," Erik told him.

"The police have it all figured out, then?" Erik's expression must've betrayed the answer Charles was looking for because he smiled, triumphant. "Don't kid yourself -- you _do_ need my help. I have resources that you'll never have access to as a cop. And I'm not even talking about illegal things. Just...there are people who will talk to me that will never talk to you. You know that."

Erik did know. He'd spent a frustrating afternoon dealing with just that problem, facing the unpleasant reality that many of the people they were sworn to protect would rather protect themselves from cops than help them catch a killer. Erik remembered his mother's own lingering issues with the police, left over from her years of oppression in East Germany and, once he'd decided to pursue law enforcement, he'd always promised himself that he would be the cop that prove all that fear wrong.

Erik also knew that if there was anything he could do stupider than bringing home a prostitute, it would be letting that same prostitute help him with the investigation.

"You seemed vaguely concerned about my safety a minute ago," Charles observed. "I'm not going to stop looking into this, so if you tell me no, I'll just be doing it alone. Wouldn't it be safer for everyone if we did this together?"

It was a cheap shot, but Erik couldn't deny its effectiveness as he tried to ignore the images the thought the conjured up of Charles dead in some alley just like Tabram or John Doe. He knew he'd probably regret it, even as he nodded his agreement. "Fine," he said, adding when Charles favored him with a wide grin. "But you bring _anything_ to me, all right? Don't go investigating alone."

Charles's smile turned a little soft around the edges, as had his eyes. "I wouldn't dream of doing anything without you, Erik." His voice was soft and he leaned in just a little, until they were almost touching, drawing Erik's attention to the fact that they'd already been standing far closer than necessary for a simple conversation.

Catching the look Charles was giving him from beneath his lashes, Erik knew he needed to get him out of his apartment quick before he did another stupid thing, like drag him off to bed and offer to pay double his rate if he stayed the night again. Instead, he stepped back and reached into his coat pocket for a card. "Call me if you find anything," he said. "My cell number is on here."

"All right," Charles agreed. Their fingers brushed as he took the proffered card and Erik tried to ignore the fact that it was accidentally-on-purpose.  
He stalked over to the front door and held it open. "Good night, Charles."

Charles gave him a look like he knew exactly why he was pushing him out the door and didn't agree with it one bit. "Don't you want me to return the favor?" he asked, as he stepped up in Erik's space once again.

"What do you mean?"

In lieu of answering, Charles slid his hand over Erik's chest which he was about to protest until he realized that Charles did so in order to free a pen from the breast pocket of his jacket. He clicked the pen a few times, then reached for the hand Erik wasn't using to hold the door open. "I prefer text," Charles informed him as he wrote out a number on the palm of Erik's hand. "But don't hesitate to reach out if you decide you need me."

It wasn't until after Erik had all but shoved Charles out of his apartment and slammed the door behind him that he realized Charles had kept his pen.

**

Charles knew he should've probably felt a little more guilty about the charade he'd decided put on for Detective Lehnsherr, but he had enough good excuses to keep them at bay. First, there was the fact that he wasn't even lying -- it was _Erik_ who had decided Charles was a hooker, not Charles. He was just choosing not to disabuse the detective of his wrong conclusion. Second, there was his story, which wouldn't be served by Erik knowing the truth. As reluctant as Erik was to accept help and share information with a sex worker, he would've been immediately put off by Charles's real occupation. The police tended to see reporters as the enemy and, Charles knew, the reverse was often true as well. Introducing the truth between them would probably sever any future contact they might have.

His third reason was that for reasons far more personal than his current story, Charles did not like the idea of severing ties with Erik Lehnsherr.

As Moira had suggested, Charles drafted a short piece on the murders later that afternoon, nothing too detailed but something that drew stronger connections between the Tabram and John Doe cases, made it seem like a big enough deal that Brian was willing to run a few lines of it in his paper. As always, he made Charles publish it under a pseudonym which meant the byline gave credit for _his_ story to Francis Pembroke. His mother, if she'd been alive, would've liked seeing her family names get so much of the limelight.

The small piece ran the next morning and Charles found himself at his father's office by the afternoon, thanks to a rather urgent call from Moira. When he reached her desk, she spun in her chair, grinning broadly.

"Well don't you look like the cat with the canary?" he teased. "What's going on?"

"Maria called," she explained. "She says she thinks she's found someone who knows John Doe."

"One of her girls?"

She shook her head. "That's the interesting part," Moira said. "One of her volunteer workers. She strips but she doesn't work the streets. Maria said she didn't give a name but she reacted badly to the photo and left before her shift was over."

"That's great news as long as you've got this girl's name for me," Charles said.

"Angel Salvadore," she announced. "Maria can't remember where she's working, so I've got Sean running it down."

"Moira, you're brilliant!" Charles laughed and tugged her to his feet so he could give her a quick, affectionate hug.

"I know!" she laughed, returning the embrace. "Now you'll just have to convince her to talk to _you_."

Charles didn't get a chance to reply because there was a derisive snort behind them and Moira yanked away from him like she'd been burned. Charles didn't need to turn around to know his father was standing there. "Afternoon, Dad."

"Why are you here every time I turn around?" Brian demanded. "The last thing I need is you slagging after one of my best reporters."

"I don't think I'm Charles's type, Brian," Moira said, slinking back into her chair.

"Neither do I but then he went and got _married_ that time and now I don't know what to expect of him," Brian said. "Never seen him with a girl, always chasing after blokes and then he comes home shackled to some bird."

"One, stop talking about me like I'm not here." Charles raised a hand in protest, pointing at his father. "And, really, do we have to go into this again? It's been years and years since Gabby and I split up."

"Still wearing your ring though, aren't you?" Brian sniped back, peering down at his hand to make the point -- one that he couldn't make because the ring was gone. "You've taken it off?"

He shrugged. "Why not?"

Brian groaned. "Good god, the fear I have now of what it means. No telling what he'll drag home next."

"You sure you don't want your favorite reporter here as you're next daughter-in-law?" Charles suggested with a wink.

"Charles!" Moira exclaimed, burying her head against her keyboard in an expression of exasperation.

Brian shook his head, waving a finger around at the room. "These people work for a living, so stop bothering them," he told Charles. "I've run your little piece, now go away and let the real reporters do their jobs."

Charles stifled his amusement. "I'll see you Saturday for dinner?"

"If you can get your sister to come home before then," Brian said as he headed back toward his office. "Otherwise, I might as well come to your place too!"

When the door closed behind him, Moira shot Charles a look. "It's amazing you're as normal as you are."

"We're more alike than you probably think," Charles told her. "Still, I should probably go before he gets started again. Have Sean text me the information when he digs it up?"

"Sure thing," Moira promised, waving him off as her desk telephone rang.

He was barely out of the building before he got the message, showing from Sean's number: _Angel Salv works @ club @ 50 W 33rd St._

It turned out that the Angel in question worked at a club that he was familiar with thanks to one too many bachelor parties in his youth. It was a rather upscale gentleman's club who valued their girls' privacy rather vigorously. So instead of dropping by and bribing the manager to get Angel's address, Charles called and spoke to the hostess who answered about arranging for a private VIP room and some expensive champagne before asking, oh so casually, if it could be for the next time the delightful Angel was working.

"You're in luck, she's on tonight," the woman on the phone said. "Shall I put you down?"

"Of course," he said, giving her the information for his father's expense account at the paper. "And put a little down for yourself, hmm?"

Next, he called Erik, ducking back into the building and into a quiet hallway so he wouldn't be overheard.

"Lehnsherr," came the terse greeting.

"It's Charles," he said. "I've found out something."

"What is it?" he asked.

"I can't say yet, it's something we'll have to check out," he explained. "Can we meet at your place about 9?"

There was a pause, like Erik had to seriously consider it. Charles rolled his eyes as he waited. "Fine."

"See you then," Charles said before he pressed the button to end the call. He ran a few errands and made a few more phone calls, including one to one of his other police contacts, this one being a former school friend who worked in Missing Persons. No one matching the description of John Doe had been reported missing which was another point in favor of the working theory of prostitute, but there were a lot of other reasons that could account for the same situation. Hank had put his age somewhere between 22 and 25, which meant it was possible he was an out-of-state student whose family had no reason to know he was missing yet, or even a young businessman or tourist on a visit to the city. As much as the case had already consumed his life, it was shocking to remember that John Doe had barely been dead 72 hours.

Just before it was time to meet Erik at his place, Charles went home to change into a nicer suit for his role as rich strip club customer, brushing a hand down the line of the gray suit before he pulled on his coat and left his brownstone, along with a note for Raven saying that he'd be out late. He spared a thought for how Erik would react to his very expensive attire -- a gift from Raven, bought with their father's ample funds -- and if it would shake his conclusion about Charles's occupation. He wasn't sure if he wanted it to or not.

Even though Charles was running a little late, Erik was even later. It was closer to 9:30 than 9:00 when he finally saw the detective striding off the elevator and down the hall of his building.

Charles hit the button to lock his smart phone screen. "I was about to text you again," Charles said.

"Work. I was in court all afternoon, and..." Erik waved his hand as if to brush away whatever had held him up. "Are you going to tell me what you found?"

"Someone who I believe can tell us who John Doe is," Charles told him, moving back a little so Erik could unlock his door. "We'll need to hurry though because we're about to miss our reservation."

Erik shot him a confused look over his shoulder as he opened his door and went inside. "I'll need to change first."

"I don't think so." Charles said, halting his advance toward the bedroom by wrapping his fingers around Erik's elbow. He was wearing a dark suit, obviously not as high quality or nicely tailored as Charles's, but he didn't need it, not on his lean form. Charles would've liked a little more time to be appreciative, but they really were in danger of losing the reservations he'd made. "We'll need to look the part for where we're going and you cut a very fine figure as you are. Come _on_."

Erik managed to negotiate enough time to check his messages quickly before he allowed Charles to drag him outside to the car. When Charles gave him the address in Korea Town, Erik did a double take. "We're going to a strip club?"

"It surprises you that someone who might know an alleged prostitute works in a strip club?" Charles asked. "Astonishing."

Erik's scowl said he didn't enjoy Charles's subtle mockery but that didn't bother Charles very much since Erik seemed very intent on sneaking glances at him at the red lights while en route to the club, and they weren't disapproving glances at all. He didn't have much chance to decide on a proper response, however, because they had pulled up to the club and Erik was reluctantly turning his keys over to the valet.

"It will be fine," Charles assured him, tugging him along when he hesitated, looking distinctly will at ease. "Inside."

The club was everything Charles remembered it to be -- posh and dimly lit, red velvet and smooth black leather, with a line of glittering female bodies writhing on the stage. He left Erik standing in the entrance way, giving their surroundings a hard stare while he spoke quietly to the hostess, slipping her his name and reservation information where the detective couldn't hear him tossing around the Xavier name. Once she'd confirmed it, she smiled and beckoned them to follow her to the club's third floor.

"Where are we going?" Erik asked, distracted by the shimmying woman on the stage as they rose above it on the spiraling staircase.

"VIP room," Charles told him. That earned him another distrustful look. "What? Do you want to try to talk to the girl in front of everyone? I thought this would be the best way to go about it."

The hostess handed them off to a blond, the VIP hostess, who led them through a hall of velvet-lined cubicles until they reached the last one in the row. Like the exterior of the club, the interior VIP room was draped in red velvet on all sides, a small bed situated in its center. Beside it were little tables, one offering an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of just-uncorked champagne and two glass flutes. "Here you are, gentlemen," she said, ushering them inside. "Angel should be up shortly."

"Thank you," Charles told her with a smile, slipping her a tip. "Everything is...lovely."

Once they were alone, he shrugged out of his coat and made himself comfortable on the bed. "It'll be a few minutes," he advised Erik who was more slowly taking off his coat. "You might as well get comfortable and enjoy the champagne." When Erik still seemed to be moving slowly, Charles poured him a glass and held it out.

"This is highly unprofessional," Erik groused, but he took it nonetheless, giving in and taking a seat on the small bed next to Charles.

"Not for me," Charles teased with a grin. He took a sip of his champagne. "Good, isn't it?"

"How do you know about this girl?" Erik asked, trying to settle more comfortably against the cushioned backboard of the bed. It was so narrow that they had no choice but to sit closely, elbows brushing with every small movement.

"A friend of a friend," he said, which was strictly true, as he considered Moira a dear friend. "Sadly our tenuous degrees of separation won't help us much, I'm afraid."

Erik sighed, carefully setting his champagne flute on the table on his side of the lounger. "How much longer will we have to wait?"

Charles glanced at his watch. "Not much," he told him. "Maybe a half-hour or so. She probably has other customers ahead of us."

"Hmm," was Erik's noncommittal reply. He was obviously not someone who dealt well with waiting and, from what Charles had seen of his personality, Erik was not someone gifted with patience.

Charles watched him out of the corner of his eye, admiring the stern, classic lines of his face and form, the way the suit fit him through the shoulders and chest. It was inconvenient, he decided, that he found Erik as distracting as he did when he was in the middle of a major story. Still, Charles wasn't one to let an opportunity go to waste and, even though he had decided against correcting Erik's assumptions about his lifestyle, he didn't want the detective to think he'd considered their night together as _work_. "I do know of a way we could pass the time," he offered.

Erik raised an eyebrow in response, which Charles noticed as he leaned over to set aside his own champagne flute. Erik was watching him with an interested but a trusting gaze, which was a mistake on his part that Charles was eager to exploit. Before Erik could protest, Charles twined his hand around Erik's dark, sedate tie and tugged him close enough that Charles could capture his lips with his own. Erik's lips parted in surprise beneath Charles's and he slid his tongue against Erik's until the detective responded, a low growl in his throat as he moved forward, hands spreading over Charles's gray-clad shoulders.

The sound Charles made in response wasn't quite a note of triumph, but it was close.

**

 _End of Part 4_


	5. Chapter 5

Erik had made several resolutions to himself when he'd reluctantly agreed to allow Charles to remain on the periphery of his case, and one of the most important had been that he wouldn't let himself fall into bed with Charles again. No matter how it came about, he had decided, it didn't have a place between them as long as the case was there.

But Charles wasn't just maddeningly addictive, he also was imminently persuasive because Erik had barely blinked before they were in a heated embrace, mouths locked together as Charles moved to straddle his legs. Erik's hands were operating of their own accord because they were sliding down the arching line of Charles's back to rest on the swell of his ass as Charles rocked against him.

There was no telling how far along they would've gone since Erik's good sense had all but fled but, luckily for him, the sound of someone clearing their throat made them guiltily jump apart.

"I think I've got the wrong VIP room..." the female voice said, and Erik could just see over Charles's shoulder enough to make out a petite, dark-haired young woman, dressed in a leather miniskirt, sequined bustier and spiked-heeled boots.

"Are you Angel?" Charles asked, also glancing over his shoulder at her.

She nodded, stepping a little farther into the VIP room.

He sighed, levering himself off to Erik back to his original seat by his side. "Then you've got the right suite."

Angel smirked a little. "You guys seemed to be doing fine on your own, but whatever. You know it's double for both of you, right?"

"That's not what we had in mind," Erik told her quickly.

"Although I'm sure it would be magical," Charles added with a devilish grin of his own, which made Erik turn to glare at him. "We were hoping you would be willing to talk," he added, ignoring Erik's stern look.

"While you guys make out? I guess I'm down with that," she said. "What do you want me to say?"

"You've got this wrong." Erik shot Charles a dark look but he looked completely unrepentant, mouth swollen and red. Erik pointedly looked away, reaching into his pocket to pull out the photo of John Doe. "We're here to ask you about this man. We believe you may know him."

Angel didn't have to get close to the bed to recognize the photo, if her sudden, troubled expression was any indication. Even with her dark skin, it was easy to see she'd lost a little color when her eyes darted over the photo's surface. "You're a cop?"

"I am," he admitted, coming to his feet. He crossed the distance between them and held out the photo. "I think this man might've been a friend of yours and I'd like to find out who did this to him."

Angel accepted the photo he held out, blinking her false-lash-heavy lids to stave off the moisture in her eyes. Instead of answering the question, she glanced over at Charles. "You're a cop, too?"

When Erik looked over at Charles, he noticed that Charles had went from teasing to utterly serious in mere seconds, his face transformed into a gentle mask of understanding. He scrambled off the bed as well, reaching over to lay a soft hand on Angel's wrist where she gripped the photo. "No, Angel, I'm not," he told her. "I'm just someone who wants to find out what happened to this man, something we won't be able to do without knowing who he is." He shared a look with the girl, one that led to them both glancing over at Erik. "You can trust, Detective Lehnsherr, Angel. I promise."

Angel took a warbling breath, trying to suppress a sniffle. "His name is Elliot Smith," she said. "We were roommates for awhile."

"Did he...?" Erik stopped, cleared his throat. "We're operating under the theory that he was working the streets as a prostitute. Could he have been?"

When she seemed hesitant to answer, Charles added, "We need the truth, Angel, or else we'll never figure out who killed him."

"He didn't work the street, hadn't since before I met him," she finally said. "But he was working as an escort. But, like...high-class, you know? Rich clients, fancy hotels, weekends away sometimes. The boyfriend experience and all."

Erik had pulled out his notepad and was furiously scribbling down Angel's answers. "You're sure?"

She nodded. "When he got hooked up into it, he started making a load of cash, it's why we stopped sharing an apartment. I couldn't afford more on rent but he upgraded. Got a fancy apartment and everything."

"Do you know where?"

Angel nodded a little and gave them a fashionable Tribeca address. "I knew when Maria showed me the photo that he was dead, that something had happened to him, but...I didn't want to think about it."

"It's all right, love," Charles murmured, comforting hand on her arm. Erik watched them as he moved off to one corner of the small room, pulling out his cell phone. Darwin answered on the third ring.

"You really need to get a life," Darwin said as soon as he answered. "And stop interrupting mine."

"Our John Doe's name seems to be Elliot Smith," Erik told him. "I've even got a possible address. I need you to start digging around."

Darwin sighed. "Send it over and I'll get to it first thing in the morning," he said. "I've got to get some sleep, man."

"I don't think you're worried about sleeping," Erik shot back, but Darwin just snorted and cut the connection. When he looked up, he noticed that Angel and Charles were no longer in the room, so he stuck his head out into the hall. "Charles?"

After a few annoyed moments of solitude, Charles finally re-appeared alone, taking the last few steps of the staircase quickly and hurrying over to where Erik was loitering outside of their VIP room. "Where did you go?" he asked.

"I settled our bill," Charles told him and Erik couldn't help but wonder how Charles had the money he'd been flashing around the club. "Also," Charles continued, holding up something silvery and metallic, "Angel was kind enough to supply me with Elliot's spare house key. Apparently, she waters his plants for him when he goes out of town." Erik wasn't sure what to say, so it was lucky that Charles seemed content to carry on the conversation single-handedly. "Fancy a drive down to Elliot's apartment?"

They grabbed their coats, then waited for the valet to bring Erik's vehicle around while Erik busied himself texting the information to Darwin. Charles was busy on his own phone, some kind of sleek and expensive smartphone that Erik wasn't tech-savvy enough to recognize, which he slipped into his coat pocket as they climbed into the car. The drive was silent though not uncomfortable and Erik couldn't help but sneak glances at Charles as he navigated the late-night streets. Despite the airs he put on, Charles looked very focused and a little tired, if the way he let his head rest against the cool glass of the passenger door window was any indication.

"Isn't all this playing detective cutting into your bottom line?" Erik asked because he was actually curious.

"I'm freelance," Charles said. "I set my own hours, my own schedule. It's not a problem to re-arrange a few appointments to leave my evenings free for you." Erik recalled Angel's description of Elliot -- _the boyfriend experience and all_ \-- and wondered if Charles's own business veered in the same direction. He stopped himself from asking, though, because they pulled up in front of the address Angel had given them.

Elliot's loft was very high-end, way better than anything Erik could ever imagine renting in New York. As soon as he unlocked the door and stepped inside, he noticed the spacious setup and swanky furniture, the wealth of electronics and modern art pieces that decorated the walls. Charles was shamelessly making poking around, first into the kitchen, then the bathroom before disappearing into what Erik assumed was the bedroom. Erik followed on his heels, coming up behind him where Charles stood at the foot of the bed, studying the room which wouldn't have been out of place in a magazine layout.

"Not very personal, is it?" Charles observed.

"No." Erik noticed the lack of photographs or personal objects anywhere in the room, not even a knickknack on the bedside table, just a lamp and a cordless phone cradle.

"Bedrooms usually have a bit more personality of the occupant in them," Charles continued, flicking his gaze in Erik's direction. "Yours certainly does."

Erik wasn't certain what Charles meant by that, but he let it slide, asking instead, "And yours?"

Charles gave him another one of those flirtatious smiles he was so good at. He sidled up next to Erik where the detective was eyeing the random assortment of items on the Elliot's dresser. "You should come over sometime," he said, making sure he was standing close enough that his breath ghosted over Erik's cheek as he spoke. "See for yourself."

Erik gave him a warning look which failed in removing the smug expression from Charles's face. Erik left him behind in the bedroom and headed back into the living room where a row of bookshelves commanded one wall and a cluttered computer desk seemed to be the only lived-in spot in the place.

As Erik was scoping out the desk, Charles came out of the bedroom to nose around the bookshelves, slowly perusing the titles as if he were in a library.

"I think we've found our John Doe," Erik said after a moment, eyeing the evidence half-hidden by the laptop dock.

"How do you know?" Charles asked.

Erik used his sleeve to pick up a framed photo from the desk. "See?"

Erik continued to examine the photo even as he held it out to Charles, the picture showing a smiling, living version of the face he'd been flashing around town for days. Though Erik had seen it in his victim, it was even more obvious in the candid shot of Elliot how he'd made his money as an escort. He was young, handsome, with wavy dark hair, laughing blue eyes, and a slim, athletic build. Dressed as he was in the photo in a dark suit and tie, he wouldn't have looked out of place anywhere. "See?" Erik said. "That's him."

Charles nodded, as he watched Erik carefully replace the photo. "It's so very sad, isn't it?" he said.

"It always is," Erik answered. His eyes strayed back to the photo, taking in the other details it revealed. Elliot had his arm thrown over a pretty dark-haired girl who perfectly matched him in her well-cut black cocktail dress. They both held wine glasses and the background looked to be at some kind of party. "I wonder who the girl is."

"Maybe a sister? Friend? Lover?" Charles offered. "They're all equally possible." He looked away, toward the high windows that overlooked the street below. "I wonder if she misses him."

Erik thought there was a story there with the sad way Charles's eyes wouldn't meet his, but he didn't want to pry, so he changed the subject. "Since it looks like this is the vic's apartment, we should probably clear out of here so I can call in a CSU team. You can't be here for that."

"Don't you at least want to finish looking around before they trample through here?" Charles asked.

"You mean, _you_ want to finish looking around before I run you off?" Erik asked back.

Charles grinned. "You've caught me."

"If I find anything interesting, I'll let you know," Erik offered, even though he knew he shouldn't have. Still, Charles had come through where no one had on finding out John Doe's -- Elliot's -- identity and Erik wanted to show his gratitude for that.

Charles nodded his agreement. "I guess I'll be on my way then."

"I could give you a ride somewhere if you needed it," Erik offered, suddenly remembering that he'd driven them there. "Or call you a cab."

"No need," Charles told him, shaking his head as he pulled out his cell phone. "I have someone who'll come pick me up."

Erik wondered who actually Charles had that would come give him a ride at midnight but he figured it was probably part of the world he lived in. He watched as Charles tucked himself into a far corner of the room and had a quick, hushed conversation before he re-pocketed the cell. "It'll just be a few minutes and I'd rather not wait on the street, if you don't mind."

Erik agreed with a wave of his hand and Charles parked himself near the windows to watch for his ride. Erik tried not to focus on Charles but instead on everything around him that might offer some insight on who had killed Elliot Smith and why. It was more difficult than he wanted to admit, especially when Charles was leaning against the sill, gazing into the blue glow of the city outside of the apartment's filmy curtains, himself looking not unlike something from a magazine, but Erik managed to lose himself in a thick file of what seemed to be financial papers and receipts that Elliot had kept in the bottom drawer of his desk. He was still looking through it, trying to discern a pattern in the purchases or the location when he felt a cool touch to the back of his neck.

He jerked away in surprise and looked up into Charles's startled expression. "I apologize," Charles said. "I just wanted to let you know I'm leaving. You can call your CSU team now."

Erik was already pulling out his phone. "Thanks."

"Good night, Erik," Charles said before he slipped out the door.

As he made the call on his cell, Erik wandered toward the window, looking down at the street where a lone car idled near the curb. It was black and sporty; like Charles's phone, something obviously very expensive but too rich for Erik to recognize immediately. He watched as Charles emerged from the building and the driver door of the car was flung open as the driver, a woman, stepped out. Even from the distance, Erik could tell she was young and beautiful, with long blonde hair and shapely legs left on display by her snug blue dress. She all but threw herself at Charles, arms wrapping tight around his neck. Charles returned the embrace, even sweeping her around a little as he said something, then landed a kiss on her temple.

He could hear Charles's voice in his head, saying _Lover?_ and _I wonder if she misses him_ with such sadness in his voice.

When Erik turned his back on them after that, he tried to tell himself it was respect for Charles's privacy and not jealousy that made him do it, but he'd never been good at lying, not even to himself.

When the CSU team finally arrived, they found themselves dealing with a very cranky Detective Lehnsherr.

**

Charles spent much of the drive back to the brownstone ignoring Raven's questions about his late-night call and trying to remind her to slow as she whipped around the streets, too busy gesticulating with her hands to keep them on the wheel. He'd had a busy night and was still trying to process how it had diverted the direction of the story.

For one, he was beginning to doubt that the Tabram and Doe -- now, Smith -- cases were as related as the police had once thought. Angel's revelation about her friend's occupation, if it bore out, meant that Tabram and Smith had as little chance to inhabiting the same circles as Tabram had with Charles. The evidence from the Tabram murder clearly supported the straightforward conclusion of a transaction-gone-wrong; it had only been the second murder that had elevated its importance past that. But it was looking more and more like the Tabram and Elliot cases shared nothing more than a general vicinity.

"Are you tired?" Charles asked Raven as they padded into the house.

She looked at him in confusion as she dropped her purse on the couch. "No?"

"Would you like to join for a cup of coffee and a midnight chat?" he asked her.

"You don't ever drink coffee," she pointed out. "What's up?"

"I need the caffeine buzz," he told her, as he reached into his coat and slowly pulled out a scuffed rectangle made of soft, brown leather. "If I'm going to get through this tonight."

Raven's eyes widened. "What is it and where did you get it?"

"It's the John Doe's -- well, he's not a John Doe anymore," he amended. "It's what looks to be his datebook."

"Where did you get that?" she demanded, excitement building in her voice. For all her stalwart resistance to following her father and brother into the family business, Raven still had the instincts and the curiosity that Charles thought made the Xaviers so successful in journalism.

"His apartment," he explained, handing it over to Raven. She ran a hand over the leather cover, all its contents still zipped inside. "That's where I was when you came to get me. I had to clear out before the police got there with the CSU team."

It had been hiding in one of the bedroom drawers and Charles had barely managed to hide it in his coat before Erik had caught him. He might've considered it a breach of their arrangement to steal a piece of evidence from the detective's nose, but Charles couldn't count on Erik's continued magnanimity, not when it could end at any moment. Charles promised himself, though, if he found anything truly earth-shattering, he'd return the favor.

Raven hugged the datebook to her chest. "You go change," she ordered, waving with her free hand at Charles's suit. "I'll start the machine."

After quickly changing into a T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants, Charles joined his sister in the kitchen where his seldom-used coffee machine was gurgling along on the path to a pot of dark, strong brew. Raven had kicked off her shoes and sat in a chair with knees tucked under her chin, waiting for him to dig into book's interior.

"So are you going to tell me about this great source you have that lets you photocopy police records and steal evidence before the crime scene people show up?" Raven asked as he poured them each a cup of coffee.

"It's not Hank," he deadpanned, placing her mug of sugary, milky coffee in front of her on the table. "He only sends me his reports."

"That's a no, then," she said, reaching for her coffee. "Fine."

When Charles unzipped the planner, it was full of loose bits of paper -- notes, stubs, receipts -- which he tucked into the back as he quickly flipped through three months' worth of pages to reach the ones dedicated to the day of the murder. "Of course there's nothing," he said, more to himself than anyone. "That would've been too easy." Next, Charles checked the next days before the murder but there wasn't anything written on the entire week, other than a hastily scribbled word that looked to say "BAS" or "BAZ" in Elliot's messy scrawl under Monday.

"There's still the rest of it to go through," Raven said in sympathy.

"True, but it'll be a job," Charles said. "I was hoping for something a little more directed."

Not long after, both siblings decided to turn in, not even the coffee doing its work to keep them alert much past midnight. Charles was up bright and early the next morning, but was quickly frustrated when he couldn't get Moira on the phone.

"She's out at some thing," Sean explained when Charles gave up and called him instead. "She's covering the Governor's press conference this morning."

That was how Charles found himself skirting around TV cameras and gawkers as he loitered at the back of Governor Shaw's press conference, watching the back of Moira's head intently, waiting for the conference to disband. With the election so close, the incumbent had spent a great deal of time in the city instead of up in Albany, but Charles could understand his reasoning. As always, the Governor looked immaculate as he stood in front of the room of reporters, stylish and poised in his suit, flashing his politician's smile. Charles had met Shaw on several occasions and while he didn't support the man's politics, he'd always found him charming if slightly oily, not unlike most career politicians he knew.

He'd arrived just in time to catch Shaw's closing statements, something about the future and his resolve, all the kind of things politicians tended to say when re-election loomed. Charles let his eyes wander over the people moving around the edges of the room, his attention momentarily caught by a rough-looking man who hovered in a far corner, looking ill-at-ease and a little out of place. He was incongruent enough to make Charles frown, but the small mystery flew out of his mind when he noticed the press members were finally starting to break off from the audience as Shaw hustled off-stage.

Charles watched as Moira slowly walked toward him, eyes down on her phone. "You called me three times and texted me twice," she said, almost an accusation. "What's so important?"

"Elliot Smith," he said quietly in her ear, gently leading her away by the elbow.

"Who's that?"

He grinned. "Our John Doe."

Moira grabbed some coffee on her way back to the office and Charles used the time to fill her in on what he'd learned the night before, leaving out the details about Erik's involvement. He told her about getting the name from Angel, his visit to Elliot's apartment, and then the datebook he'd managed to smuggle out before the police arrived.

"Don't get caught," she warned. "I don't want to bail you out again."

He rolled his eyes. "It was _one_ time," he told her. "I'm still in contact with my source over there. So far, he's been fairly good at helping me eschew police interest."

Moira looked delighted over the fact he still had his mysterious police source. He wondered if she'd feel the same if she knew exactly what he'd been doing to keep that source around. "I'll have Sean dig into Elliot Smith," she told him. "So far, he hasn't found much in his background work, so he could use the break."

"I'm hoping I'll hear from my source today about they found in Smith's apartment that was any help," Charles said. "There was at least a laptop to look through, on top of a lot of files. Maybe what they have is more illuminating than the datebook."

Charles soon parted ways with Moira, as she hurried back to the office to write up her coverage of Shaw's press conference, while Charles had more investigating to do. He decided he'd given Hank enough time and space to recover from his guilt for alerting Charles to the story in the first place. Hank answered on the first ring.

"I can't talk to you!" he said in lieu of an actual salutation.

"Good day to you, too, Hank," Charles said pleasantly.

"I'm serious, I can't talk right now," Hank said, speaking too closely into the phone so that his words were muffled and breathy.

"I really would like to discuss the Smith case with you a little more," continued Charles.

"Smith case?" Hank asked.

"You know, our former John Doe."

Hank let out a panicked yelp. " _How do you even know that?_ " he demanded. "I just got orders to match him against Smith's dental records!"

"As I keep telling you, you aren't my only source," Charles reminded him. "When can we chat? I have some ideas about the story that I think you can help me with."

After a moment of static-filled silence, Hank sighed. "I really can't talk here. But I guess we could meet for lunch."

Since it was nearing that hour already, Charles quickly agreed and caught a cab so he could meet Hank at a small diner near enough for Hank to dash out without too much trouble. It gave him a moment's pause to risk being so near where he might run into Erik, but he was relatively certain the bustling lunch crowds would protect him from being seen.

Hank was already at the diner, hunched over his chicken salad and looking every inch the 15-year-old wunderkind that Charles had met at Harvard. It was something he and Raven had in common, an ability to instantly transform themselves into mulish teenagers by a simple change in posture.

"I'm not telling you anything new," Hank said as soon as he sat down.

Charles rolled his eyes. "Then why did you agree to meet me?"

Hank thought about it for a moment. "Because we're friends?"

"Which is why you'll answer my questions," Charles said, idly patting his arm.

"If I do, you'll write about it again," Hank said. "Don't think I didn't recognize the byline, _Francis_."

"I'm a reporter, Hank, it's what I do," Charles reminded him. "Now, cheer up. I found out some of it on my own."

Hank sighed, shoulders slumping forward in acceptance. "What is it?"

Charles explained how his own conclusions were starting to make him doubt the police's early theory that the Tabram and Smith cases were related. "It's looking less and less certain from where I sit," Charles told him. "I was wondering about what the forensics were saying on the matter."

"The shallow similarities are striking, but that's where they end," Hank admitted. "The more closely I examine Smith's murder, the more I find ways that they're vastly different."

"What do you mean?"

Hank swirled his straw in his glass. "Tabram bled out at the scene; Smith didn't. Tabram had way more distinct stab wounds than Smith and it looks like the first one got Smith right in the heart, where Tabram had, well, nicks in several of his organs and that's what led to his death. All the forensic details are diverging the more I look at them."

"So not the same killer?" Charles wanted to know.

Hank shrugged. "It's possible but it's looking more unlikely. Different knives, different stab wounds, different kill patterns..."

"Looking for the connection has been leading the police off in the wrong direction," Charles said. "They've been wasting time trying to find the link -- and Smith's identity, of course."

"But Detective Lehnsherr figured it out," Hank said. "I told you he was a good detective which is why you _have_ to be discreet, Charles, with anything I tell you. If he found out I was talking to a reporter..."

"Don't worry, Hank, I promise I'll be discreet enough, even for your Detective Lehnsherr," Charles said, trying not to laugh at the joke only he knew was in his words. "Speaking of, how has he been lately?"

"I'm not sure, I avoid him as much as I can," he admitted. "When I can get away with it, I communicate only through email or Darwin."

"Darwin?" Charles asked.

"Detective Muñoz, his partner." Hank said. "Why are you so interested in Lehnsherr?"

Charles shrugged. "You've got me wondering about him. Mean, gruff, but a great detective, champion of the downtrodden. He sounds like a very fascinating man."

"I don't think he's your type," Hank said. "He probably doesn't suffer reporters to live or whatever."

Charles laughed. "You're probably right about that," he agreed. "But what do you know about my type? We might get along famously."

Hank shook his head. "Trust me, you guys would never click."

Charles once again had to hide his amusement, this time behind his glass. "Pity we'll never know."

 _End of Part 5_


	6. Chapter 6

It was a rare occurrence, but Darwin beat Erik to the precinct for the second time that week.

"You're getting slow," Darwin said when Erik sat down at his desk.

"You're getting kicked out of bed earlier," Erik shot back. "Trouble in paradise with Alex?"

Darwin snorted. "Yeah, my asshole boss keeps calling me at crazy hours and messin' with our alone time."

Erik feigned fake innocence. "Then maybe you're in the wrong line of work."

Darwin's grin was smug over the top of his monitor. "You're not going to feel that way when you see what I've found," he informed him. "Come over here."

Erik did so, leaning down over Darwin's shoulder to look at what his partner had on the screen. It was a website in a red and black scheme, with scrolling script letters announcing it as The Hellfire Club. "What is it?"

"I called a friend of mine who works Vice," Darwin explained, as he began to click through the site. "He did a few stints on the Craigslist stings a while back, so he helped me come up with some search terms and...voila!" The last click loaded a page that looked like some kind of profile, complete with a smiling Elliot Smith in the left-hand corner.

"But _what is it_?" Erik asked again.

Darwin glanced away from the screen. "It's a site for a high-end escort service called The Hellfire Club. Cute, huh? Most of the high-end stuff has some kind of online presence, you just have to know what you're looking for, which is where my friend came in. Anyway, after a few hours of pounding keywords, I found Smith's profile. He was definitely working and he was definitely high-end."

Erik stared at the handsome face of the dead body in his morgue, wishing the grainy web photo could tell him something he didn't already know. "So they're fronting as a legit business?"

"Well as legit as you can be when you're advertising as an escort service," Darwin said. "But yeah, they've got an address and telephone number on file."

"Maybe we ought to pay the Hellfire Club a little visit," Erik decided, straightening up, already moving toward the door.

Darwin grinned, reaching for his coat. "Hell yeah."

The business front for the "club" was a small office space in a building just on the edge of a respectful neighborhood. The placard outside read "THFC" but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, especially since they'd come looking for it. The office they found behind the doorconsisted of a small but immaculate waiting room, painted in a deep red. There was a small receptionist desk where a pretty young woman with long, pale hair sat working a switchboard. When the door swung shut behind the cops, she looked up, eyes widening a little as she murmured into her headset, "Hold, please."

"This is the Hellfire Club, isn't it?" Erik asked as he approached, causally reaching for his badge.

"Yes," she said uncertainly, eyes darting between him and Darwin. Erik was fairly certain that if they got many visitors, he and Darwin didn't fit the type. "How can I help you?"

Erik held out his badge. "We'd like to talk to someone in charge about one of your...employees."

The receptionist was frowning at them. "Just a second, please," she said as she stood up and hurried over to one of the three closed doors that lined the wall behind her desk. Even before she'd pulled it closed behind her, they could hear her talking in quiet, fierce tones.

"You didn't have to scare her," Darwin pointed out, more amusement than censure in his voice.

Erik shrugged, leaning over the receptionist desk to see if he could make out anything of interest on the desk or computer screen. "I was as friendly as usual."

"Which isn't saying much."

A moment later, she reappeared, a tall, dark-haired woman on her heels. The new woman was dressed to the nines in a black skirt with matching jacket and shiny leather boots. The receptionist didn't meet their eyes as she slid back in her seat, leaving it up to the second woman to speak to them. She stepped forward, one hand outstretched toward Erik. "Rachel tells me you need to speak to someone about an employee?"

"Yes, we do," Erik told her, taking her hand in a handshake. "I'm Detective Erik Lehnsherr and this is my partner, Detective Muñoz."

"Selene Gallio," she said in return. "May I ask who you need information about?"

"Elliot Smith," Darwin answered. "According to your website, he's one of your regular escorts?"

She tugged a little at the collar of her blood-red shirt. "Yes, he is. But I'm afraid I haven't heard from him in a few days. The escorts are very freelance here."

"I'd be more worried if you had heard from him," Erik told her. "He's been dead almost a week."

At that, the first sign of real emotion flashed over perfectly made-up face. "I...didn't know."

"Not only that, he was murdered," Darwin explained. "You might've read that article in the paper a day or two ago, about the dead prostitute in the Bronx?"

Selene pursed her lips a little and narrowed her eyes. "Elliot was a legitimate escort, not a prostitute," she snapped. "And yes I read the article, I just didn't..."

"...realize it was one of yours?" When she refused to react, Erik continued. "I hope that means you're in a mood to help us catch his killer."

She immediately looked suspicious again, all softer emotions disappearing from her face. "And how can I help you gentlemen with that?"

"It seems logical to start with whoever he might've had an appointment with the night of his murder," Erik said. "Maybe even ask some of his regulars if they knew if something was going on with him."

Her eyes hardened. "I'm sorry but I can't do that," she told them. "Our clients value their privacy and it's really against policy to hand that kind of information over."

"You don't care about finding out who killed one of your guys?" Darwin asked. "I guess you don't miss him too much."

"I care deeply about all of my employees, Elliot included," she said, glaring in Darwin's direction. "But that doesn't change the fact that it's against company policy to hand over that kind of information."

"All it'll take is one little warrant," Erik said. "And I'll remember how cooperative you've been. It might help later on."

Selene sneered, barely even trying to cover the expression with a fake smile. "I suggest you come back once you have that little warrant, Detective," she told him. "Until then, you'll have to excuse me because I have work to do."

Erik just managed to suppress the curse he wanted to let out as he watched Selene stomp back into her office, shutting the door with enough force to startle Rachel.

"Were you expecting something different?" Darwin asked.

"No," Erik admitted, heading toward the door. "But, just once, I'd like to get a damn break on this case."

"Amen, brother," Darwin said, as he nodded goodbye to the receptionist and followed Erik back out into the corridor. "What's next?"

"We get Frost to give us that warrant and we get that client list," Erik declared. "And anything else I can find to ask for that'll piss off Selene Gallio."

"Truth, justice and revenge," Darwin laughed. "Good to see you're fighting the good fight for all the right reasons."

Erik had a quick, terse conversation with Emma on his cell phone about his need for a warrant before he and Darwin headed down to the vehicle. At first, they drove back to the precinct in silence, Darwin seemingly absorbed with his furious typing on his cell phone. Erik figured he was probably texting sweet nothings to Alex and left him alone to do his groveling.

"So," Darwin said half-way through the drive, snapping Erik's attention from the road for a split-second. "Speaking of breaks in this case, I'm still wondering how you came up with Smith's name."

"I told you, a stripper named Angel," he said.

"Hey, but how did you come up with _her_ name?" Darwin asked. "You never explained that."

Erik shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Someone from the street coughed it up."

While it was technically the truth, Darwin was still eyeing him suspiciously. "Okay, let's say I buy that," he said. "You've still been acting weird ever since we pulled this murder. You're going off by yourself, and coming up with leads you can't explain, and...you were late _twice_. I'm ready to look for pods, man."

"It's not that bad," Erik argued, realizing too late that he'd tacitly agreed with Darwin's assessment with his statement. "Fuck."

"Yeah," Darwin said, finally tucking his phone into his pocket. When Erik risked a glance in his direction, his dark eyes were steady and serious. "Something's going on with you. You know you can talk to me, right? Whatever's got you in knots isn't good for either of us because your stress tends to be contagious in very unpleasant ways."

As much as Erik didn't want to admit what he'd done to anyone, Darwin was probably the one person he was pretty certain he could trust with the truth; more importantly, it was unfair to Darwin to be left in the dark when Erik's mistakes could come back to bite the _case_ in the ass, which would leave them both in the line of fire. Erik sighed and took the first turn-off he came to for a quiet side road.

"Where are we going?" asked Darwin, straightening up as he glanced out his window.

"I can't have this conversation while I'm driving," Erik said. "And I damn sure can't have it back at the station."

After a few minutes, he found a space on a quiet street, and he threw the car into park with more force than necessary.

"You're starting to scare me, Erik," Darwin said. "How serious is this?"

"My informant on this case is a hooker," Erik began. He nervously drummed his fingers against the textured curve of the steering wheel. "I met him that first night I went canvassing."

"Okay?" Darwin replied. "Not seeing the problem yet."

Erik winced. "He didn't start helping me until I saw him the second time. After I...slept with him."

"You _what_?" Darwin asked, voice rising, which earned him a cutting look. "You didn't pay him, did you?"

"No!" Erik told him, running a hand through his hair. "Well...I offered and he turned me down."

"And he knows you're a cop."

"Yeah."

"Fuck, Lehnsherr," Darwin said, shaking his head. "How did you even...?"

"I was really drunk," he admitted. "And he's really..." There were a lot of words he'd used to describe Charles but he wasn't sure any were appropriate for the conversation. He didn't think smart or charming or witty or even really good in bed was going to help him much in the face of Darwin's incredulity.

"I've known you five years and you've lived like a really moody monk," Darwin finally said. "And then you fall into bed with a hooker with info on a case? Are you trying to get fired?"

"Of course I'm not," he snapped. "And frankly we should be grateful he's willing to share what he knows because, speaking of _breaks_ , he's given me more of them than we've found on our own."

Darwin's shoulders slumped. "True," he sighed. He turned to Erik. "Do you think he'll flip on you if something went down?"

"No," Erik said and he was surprised by how certain he was of it. "Plus, I didn't actually pay him, you know. So far the only thing I'm guilty of is a bad choice in a pick-up."

"Then why is it eating at you?" Darwin asked with the kind of uncanny perception that made him a great detective and made Erik hate him a little in that moment. "If you think you haven't done anything wrong?"

"Shut up, Darwin," Erik growled.

Darwin smiled instead. "Yeah, like I said." He let out a nervous laugh. "And I've never even seen you check out a guy. If I had, I wouldn't have waited so long before I sprang my love life on you."

"It's not the usual, but it's happened before," Erik said, waving a hand to dismiss the line of questioning. "And this wasn't something I planned."

"I can tell," Darwin said. "What are you gonna do about him?"

Erik sighed. "I'm going to keep my eye on him until this case is over, otherwise he might get himself killed playing amateur detective."

"And then?" Darwin asked.

"And then...?" Erik hadn't really thought much about after the case, when he no longer had a reason to keep Charles on the periphery of his thoughts. He'd only known him a few days but he was already getting used to him, the random text messages and the wicked grin, the way his eyes could light with sympathy at someone else's imagined pain. As much as he'd scoffed at Hollywood fairy tales like the one that sold the hooker with the heart of gold cliché to millions, Charles was one of the most empathetic people he'd met in a long time. "Nothing, I guess."

"Uh oh," Darwin said, rolling his eyes. "I can't believe it."

"What?" Erik demanded, glancing sharply toward his partner.

"You _like_ this guy," Darwin accused, pointing a finger in emphasis. "That's a million times worse than just letting him blow you in an alley."

Since Erik didn't know what to say to that, he was glad when his ringing phone saved him from having to reply. "Lehnsherr."

"It looks like your warrant won't come through until tomorrow at the earliest," Emma's voice said over the phone. "The court's being a little cagey on it at the moment."

Erik wanted to growl out his frustration but he refrained. "Tomorrow?"

"I'm reasonably certain, yes," she said.

"Thanks," he said. "Any word on the stuff we brought back from Smith's apartment?"

"I'm not your secretary, Detective," she said coolly.

"I haven't forgotten that, _Captain_ ," he replied. "But I still figured you'd know, being in charge and all."

Instead of answering, she hung up on him.

"What's up?" Darwin wanted to know.

"Warrant won't come through until tomorrow and there's nothing out of forensics yet," he said, as he threw the car into gear and pulled out of his space on the street. "I'll give you a ride home."

"We're calling it a day already?" Darwin asked dubiously.

"I'll cover the desk," Erik told him. "I figure I owe you an early day to play make-up to your boyfriend."

Darwin grinned, delighted, but then it faded. "You don't have to bribe me, Erik," he said softly. "Your secret is safe with me."

"I know," he said. "But I'm still in the mood to cut you some slack for once. Don't waste it."

"In that case..."

Erik listened to the sound of Darwin tapping out a message to Alex and tried not to think about what he'd want to be doing with a suddenly-free afternoon.

**

There were only a few people on earth that could turn Charles's time and attention away from a story when he was in the thick of it and his father happened to be one of them. It was for that reason that Charles found himself nicely dressed and seated at his father's favorite restaurant at precisely 8:30PM instead of out chasing leads like he'd planned.

"Well, I'm here," he pointed out after their salads arrived. "Even though I thought we were doing this Saturday and not today."

"Unexpected change in my schedule," Brian said with a dismissive wave of his wine glass.

"And we were supposed to have dinner at the house, with Raven," Charles added.

"Your sister still isn't talking to me, though I'm not sure why," Brian reminded him as he reached for his fork.

"You never know why," Charles reminded him with a laugh. "I believe that's one of the problems in general, isn't it?"

"Both you and Raven have all these _feelings_ ," Brian said. "I don't know what to do with them."

"You mean, other than stomping all over them?" Charles took a bite of his salad. "I think we have ample evidence on that fact."

It wasn't that Charles didn't like his father because he did and it wasn't even that Brian was bad at parenting when he was arsed to give it a try; the issue was that his two children had inherited their stubborn pig-headedness from their father, which meant rarely did a discussion take place that didn't turn into some kind of argument.

"I didn't invite you here to talk about your sister," Brian told him.

"Invite?"

" _Ask._ "

" _Order_."

"Request," Brian said decisively, continuing on before Charles could come up with another word to describe his father's style of conversation. "I wanted to hear more about this story you're following."

"You read the initial piece, yes?" When his father nodded, Charles shrugged. "That's the main of it, really. Two dead men with ties to sex work and the police haven't a clue. Nothing else to say at the moment."

"Bollocks," Brian said, a little louder than necessary if the expression of the people at a table over was any indication. "I know you've got more than that now."

"And how would you know this?" Charles asked.

Brian smirked. "Because you're my son. So stop being coy and cough it up."

It was as close as Brian Xavier came to a compliment so Charles took it as one, making sure his voice was pitched low as he filled him in. "Okay, fine. According to one of my sources, the police are starting to realize that they have two separate killers on their hands, but they haven't gotten very far on either of them. It looks like the second victim was working high-end, so I'm thinking that it could get a little thorny. No telling who he was mixed up with working that crowd, he could know everyone from senators on down. Of course, he could've just met with a bad fate with a bad john. Hard to say at this point."

Brian nodded along with Charles's explanation. "And how is Hank these days?"

"Still pining over Raven," Charles admitted. "But he's not my only source on this story."

"Yes, MacTaggart mentioned you have someone with a little more guile in them," he said. "Getting you copies of police reports and so on."

"Giving me access to getting copies of police reports," Charles said, thinking of the way he'd actually gotten those scans. "There's a big difference."

When their main courses arrived, the interrogation abated long enough for Brian to make a dent in his filet mignon and for Charles to take a few bites of his salmon before Brian started once again. "It sounds like this might be heading into dangerous territory."

"I haven't even risked a nail break on it so far," Charles told him.

"Still..." Brian paused, stabbing another piece of steak with his fork. "Dead prostitutes, the inklings of something bigger on the horizon..."

"Dad," Charles began, grinning. "Are you worried about me?"

"I don't give a damn if you jump off a bridge," he replied, which Charles knew meant his father _was_ worried. "But I'd rather not see Moira's work on this go down the tubes because you do."

"Your concern is truly appreciated and noted," Charles said, delighting in the spasm-like ticks of emotions that crossed his father's face. "But I've got someone working with me on this. I'm safer than I usually am, really."

For Brian's sake, Charles didn't press for any more feelings talk over the rest of the dinner, instead enjoying the gourmet deal on his father's tab. He declined dessert, though, and watched as his father, now a little tipsy from the wine with their food, gently flirted with their waitress, showing that it might've been possible that Charles had inherited some of his own natural charm from the Xavier branch of the family instead of the Pembrokes.

They were outside of the restaurant, shivering a little in the cold while they waited for Brian's driver to bring his car around when Charles felt the vibration of his phone in his coat pocket, alerting him to a text. Out of deference to his father's strange ideas about reporters not checking their phones during a meal, Charles hadn't even looked at it since he'd arrived at the restaurant, but now he unlocked the screen and perused his waiting messages. Two were from Erik, and those he read immediately.

 _Got some info you may like to know_ , said the first one, left over almost two hours before.

The second one was only about half-an-hour old and said, _Stop by? It's important._

"Thanks for the offer, Dad, but I think I'll just catch a taxi," Charles said as he pocketed his phone.

"The car will be here in a minute," Brian told him.

Charles shook his head. "Change of plans. I've got to meet a source."

Brian's car pulled up just as he'd spoke. "I'll still give you a lift," he said. "Get in."

Since Charles knew there was no arguing with his dad when he was in a mood, he rolled his eyes and ducked into the back of the sleek sedan. His father joined him and nodded for him to give the driver the address of his destination. Charles thought about it for a moment before giving him the address for the building across the street from Erik's.

"So you're going to a source's apartment?" Brian asked as the driver smoothly joined the flow of traffic. "Doesn't sound all that safe to me."

"It's fine," Charles promised. Then, he shot his father a look. "Do you give Moira this kind of grief when she's working a story?"

"Moira works for a fine newspaper and is part of a team," he said. "She's not some headstrong pissant who goes off on his own half-cocked whenever he feels like it."

"I couldn't be safer," he assured him.

"Charles," Brian began and it was a rare enough occurrence that it caught his attention. "I meant it when I told you not to get yourself killed."

Charles's attitude softened at the hint of sincerity in his father's acerbic tone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen and one of his own cards that bore nothing but his phone number. After a moment's hesitation, he scribbled Erik's name, rank and cell number on the back, then handed it to Brian. "Only in the case of absolute emergency," he warned his father. "I don't want to risk him, you hear? So unless you think I'm dead or in mortal peril, forget you have that number."

Brian snorted as he tucked the card into his wallet. "Are _you_ trying to tell me about how to work the journalism game? I was breaking big stories before you were even a gleam in your father's eye -- and I speak with authority on this!"

Charles just grinned at his father as he pointed for the driver to pull up to the curb. He was about a block from Erik's, but he thought it was safer to walk the rest of the way. "Thanks for the ride," he said as he stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"Remember what I said," Brian ordered before the car pulled away. Charles watched the taillights for a moment, waiting until his father's vehicle was out of his sight before he headed down the sidewalk toward Erik's building.

He hadn't bothered to text back that he was on his way, but Erik must've been watching for him because he'd barely knocked before the detective was yanking his front door open. "You didn't get my first text?" Erik asked, no greeting or preamble at all.

"Not until a little bit ago actually," Charles said, as he stepped inside and shrugged out of his outer coat. "I had a prior engagement."

He watched Erik's back stiffen. "I see. I didn't mean to cut into...business."

Sometimes Charles forgot for entire minutes that Erik thought he was a prostitute, but then the cop would say something completely inane or something infused with just the right tone of disapproval that Charles would be reminded of the charade. He rolled his eyes where Erik couldn't see him. "It was just dinner," he said casually. "Tonight, anyway."

Charles left his coat over the chair by the door as he followed Erik into the living room, sinking down on the other end of the sofa from where Erik had taken a seat. "You said you had something important?" he said.

Erik must've settled in for the night, Charles noted, because the living room was strewn with paperwork. The coffee table was covered with it, except for the space taken up by an empty plate and a sweating beer bottle, probably the remains of dinner. Likewise, Erik was out of his work clothes, dressed down in a T-shirt and sweatpants that Charles remembered from their morning-after. He felt unaccustomedly overdressed in his button-down, slacks and jacket.

Erik nodded, reaching for one of his files. "Darwin -- my partner -- he did some digging today and found the agency that Elliot was working out of. It's called The Hellfire Club and it's definitely high-end."

Charles tried to remember if he'd ever heard of it before, deciding he hadn't. "Anything else?"

"We should be getting a warrant for a client list tomorrow and anything else we can think of," Erik told him. "Hopefully we'll find something."

Charles leaned against the armrest on the sofa, elbow supporting his dropping head, thinking about all the crazy initials and shorthand in Elliot's datebook. "It might be encoded or otherwise obfuscated."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Erik agreed before he furrowed his brow and shot Charles a look. "Did you really just use "obfuscated" in the course of a normal conversation?"

"This is hardly a normal conversation," Charles smiled.

"You know what I mean," Erik said, but he looked a little more relaxed than he had when Charles had first come in.

"I'm full of surprises," Charles promised.

"I don't doubt that," Erik told him. "Are you....familiar with The Hellfire Club?"

"No?" Charles asked, then comprehension hit him. "Oh, you're asking...? No, I told you that my work is...freelance. No middlemen, so to speak."

The last of the tension seemed to bleed out of Erik and Charles was caught off-guard by the realization that Erik had actually been worried that his investigation would expose his entirely-false double-life as a high-end escort, a fact that almost made up for his disapproval over Charles's completely innocent dinner date with his own father. Between Erik's unexpected concern and his father's brusque affection, Charles was hazy and warm from the sentiment -- or at least from the wine he'd had from dinner. That, and the long day, was actually starting to catch up with him.

As if he could read his thoughts, Erik gave him an appraising look as he reached out with a bare toe to prod at Charles's shiny dress shoe. "What exactly did you do at dinner?"

Charles laughed. "Probably nothing that you're thinking," he assured him. "But I did have wine, which isn't the best idea when I'm already tired."

"You look it," Erik stated bluntly, now loose and languid where he was sprawled on the other end of the sofa. It doubly reminded Charles of how tired he was and made envy rise up in him that his own comfy living room set wasn't nearly close enough to his liking.

He opened his mouth to defend himself but all that came out was a yawn. "I guess that's a sign I should be on my way," Charles admitted a little sheepishly.

Erik leaned forward to start gathering up his papers and Charles almost missed the flash of something that made its way across his features. "You could always crash here," he offered a moment later.

Charles couldn't let it pass, especially since the thought of another night in Erik's bed was almost enough to chase off his lethargy. "Is that an invitation?" he asked with just enough innuendo to make his meaning clear.

"No," Erik said almost immediately, though Charles noted that his eyes went dark even as he denied it, gaze lingering near Charles's mouth. "But this couch is comfortable, if you want to give it a shot."

There was something very alluring about the idea of another night spent under Erik's roof, even if he didn't make it to the bed, and Charles didn't see a reason to turn down the offer, either -- especially not with Erik's files so close by. "If you really don't mind."

Something close to a smile tugged at Erik's mouth. "I really don't mind," he said as he stood, clearing away his plate and the now-neat stack of police files.

Charles didn't even realized he'd drifted off until he heard Erik return to the living room what the clock on the DVD player told him was over a half-hour later, bearing a blanket and a pillow. He reached out and kicked off his shoes, then made sure that phone was safe in his slacks pocket right before Erik tossed the blanket over him.

"You really are a very nice person," Charles told him, feeling his first pang of actual guilt over the way he had causally manipulated the detective into helping him. Because Erik _was_ nice and, from everything he heard, a good police officer.

"I've got a whole precinct of cops who'll tell you different." Erik leaned over Charles to douse the reading lamp behind his head. "Not to mention a few exes."

Charles reached out to touch his fingers to Erik's scratchy cheek, smiling a little at the way Erik's breath caught in response to the caress. "They're wrong," he said, leaning forward the few inches needed to brush his mouth against Erik's. He didn't take it any farther, however, instead settling back on the pillow Erik had given him.

"Good night," Erik said, voice a little rough as he disappeared toward his room, turning out the lights as he went.

The next morning, Charles tried not to think about the fact that he didn't even try to peek at any of Erik's files before he scribbled out a thank you note and slipped out the door.

**   
_End of Part 6._


	7. Chapter 7

Erik wasn't surprised that Charles had left before his first alarm went off, but he did feel like he was missing something when he checked through the house to find it empty of any overnight guests. He remembered Charles's easy familiarity from that first morning and he couldn't help but admit that he'd been hoping for a repeat performance.

But he had, it seemed, played his hand too well in the days before because all that was left of Charles was a handwritten note thanking him for hospitality, left on top of the neatly-folded blanket stacked on his sofa with the pillow.

Still, something about the morning left Erik in a decent mood, one that was mild enough that Darwin felt safe enough to remark on it.

"Good night?" Darwin asked.

"Shouldn't that be my question for you?" Erik returned. "If you received any strange calls last night, they weren't from me."

"I noticed!" Darwin called after him as Erik swept past on his way to Emma's office. She was at her desk like usual, pale blond head bent over her work.

He rapped his knuckles against the door in a short staccato before he stepped in, not bothering to wait for some kind of signal that he should enter. "What's the word on my warrant?"

Emma looked up, glaring over the wire rim of her reading glances. "Good morning, Detective."

"Emma," he said, something about her tone setting him on edge. "You said I'd have my warrant today and it's today. What's the hold-up?"

She sighed and took her off glasses. "Why don't you come in and close the door so we can have an actual conversation?"

"Fuck." He closed the door behind him but declined the seat, leaning against the wall instead.

"I could do without the language, too," she said, sitting back in her chair with another sigh. "You're not getting your warrant."

Erik narrowed his eyes. "Yet, you mean."

She grimaced. "At all."

" _What_ the fu---"

"Lehnsherr!" she barked. "I mean it about the language."

"Then tell me what the hell is going on with my warrant?" he demanded.

"The judge is reluctant to sign off on it," she explained.

"Then find another," he said. "I've seen you do it before."

Emma watched him with her pale, shrewd eyes for a moment before she looked away. "This time, I agree with them."

" _What_?"

She held up a hand to staunch the inevitable flow of profanity and, out of deference for their long professional friendship, Erik managed to bite back on his curse.

Instead, he threw himself into the chair that Emma had offered earlier. "What's going on here, Emma?"

"I think you're chasing ghosts with this thing," she said. "You don't have any solid evidence to link this escort website to Smith's murder and I really don't want to waste my good will with the judge on it."

"Proof? Emma, what more do you want -- he worked for them. They're an escort service. He was found dead. What else do I need?"

"An actual link?" she said with barely restrained sarcasm. "Just because he might've worked for these people doesn't mean they have anything to do with it."

" _Mein Gott_ ," he bit out, proving just how frustrated he'd become with Emma and the conversation. "You can't be serious."

She glared. "I am. In fact, I think maybe you need a break from this case entirely."

Erik knew he had to look stupid with the way he was gaping back at his captain, but it had been years since she'd so honestly shocked him. For all of their disagreements over the years, he and Emma had always found common ground on one point -- doing their job and doing it right. The words that she was saying, ignoring the obvious ties between The Hellfire Club and Smith's death, telling him to take a break -- it was like someone else was speaking through her. "You're crazy."

"You have other cases you could be working on," she reminded him. "Including that first one, the Tabram case. Why don't you focus on it for a while?"

"Because the Smith case is the hot one," he argued. "His identity was key to getting somewhere and now that we know that, we're _getting somewhere_. You can't pull us back now."

"I don't know if you've noticed but it says "Captain" on my door, so I can do just that," she snapped back. "You're lucky I'm not just taking it off your plate in the first place."

"Go ahead," he taunted. "See how far someone else gets with it."

She continued to glare at him but her hesitancy in the face of his bluff meant that he'd just called hers. "I'm asking you to backburner this for a little while, that's all."

Erik rose from the chair and loomed over her, although it didn't seem faze her in the slightest. "That's not something the Emma Frost I know would ever say, not without a damn good reason."

"Then maybe you should trust me for once," she said. "Let it go, Lehnsherr. I'm asking you."

He didn't even bother to reply to that, shooting one last venomous glare over his shoulder before he stormed out of her office. Erik didn't care how she wanted to frame the little speech she'd just given him, there was something going on. A few days before she'd been jumping down his throat for not moving fast _enough_ , and now she was telling him to slow down, and letting some judge block his search warrant when it should've been an easy sell to anyone. If Smith had been a baker, he could've gotten a warrant to search the premises and get a client list.

"I see the good mood didn't last," Darwin observed as Erik sat back down at his desk. "What did Frost have to say?"

"Someone's decided we don't get our warrant for The Hellfire Club," Erik told him. "Oh and Emma thinks we need to back off the Smith case period."

Darwin's dark eyes widened. "The hell?"

"Exactly," Erik told him. "Something's not right."

"Pods, man," Darwin said, shaking his head. "This place is full of _pods_."

"Hopefully we'll get something from that laptop if forensics ever gets to it," Erik said, to which Darwin nodded.

Erik tried to focus on his other cases which he did have, and some of the paperwork he had waiting for him, but he couldn't shake his growing uneasiness. He and Emma had butted heads over cases in the past but the more he thought about their conversation the morning, the more it felt less and less like the usual different points of view. Upon reflection, it felt ominous and that feeling left Erik irritated and jittery.

At midday, he turned down Darwin's invitation to head out for a quick bite and, by mid-afternoon, he was like a caged tiger, all glares and growls at everyone who came too close. Luckily Darwin was immune to his bad moods after so long, but he frightened away a new ADA when she came looking for him, as well as a lab tech who'd had the unfortunate luck as to mistake him for another detective.

Even Azazello, who lacked good sense on almost all counts, was wary enough to steer clear of Erik, though he did approach Darwin when Erik was away from his desk. He caught the tail-end of the conversation as he prowled back from Records, but he could hear Azazello saying, "...how rough that is. Especially on the likes of Lehnhserr, he was pretty involved in the case."

"Yeah," Darwin said. "It's always rough when someone up the political food chain is screwing with you over."

"Amen," Azazello said as he looked up and noticed Erik's approach. "You let me know if I can do anything for you guys, okay, Muñoz?"

"Yeah, thanks man," Darwin answered as Azazello hurried past a glaring Erik.

"Anything?" Erik asked his partner instead of commenting like he wanted on a detective like _Azazello_ stopping by to offer sympathy.

Darwin shook his head. "Nothing from the techs."

Erik hadn't even sat down all the way before he was up again. "I'm going to see what's making so long."

"That's probably not a good idea," Darwin cautioned him but dutifully fell into step behind him as he plowed on through the building on his way to the lab. He bypassed McCoy's group and went looking for their computer forensics guys who were supposed to be hacking their way through Elliot's password-protected laptop for him.

"Levene!" Erik barked as he stormed into the lab. The head computer tech glanced up from where he was futzing with what looked like a disassembled computer to Erik's untrained eye.

"Yes?" he asked, blinking up through his glasses.

"What's taking so long with that laptop we got from Elliot Smith's apartment?" Erik asked. "I wasn't waiting for forensics on it, I just needed to get into it."

"Detective Lehnsherr, I have no idea what you're talking about," Levene said. "I don't have any tech from the Smith case -- I'm not even sure what it is."

That uneasy feeling Erik had been nursing all day made the hackles rise up on the back of his neck. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't have a laptop from a Smith case," Levene told him.

"I sent it down here after we swept the apartment!"

"Well, it didn't make it here," Levene said, pulling up a screen on his work terminal. "Yeah, see? Nothing in my logs. I'm sorry."

"Darwin," Erik began, voice slow but no less furious. "Find out what happened to that laptop."

He nodded. "On it."

While Darwin went in search of the missing laptop, Erik headed to Evidence to follow up on a terrible hunch. It didn't take him long to confirm it.

"It's missing," he told Darwin a few minutes later as he headed back to his desk.

Darwin had the phone receiver cradled against his shoulder. "I know, I'm trying to find it."

"I don't just mean the laptop," Erik told him.

"Huh?"

Erik grabbed his coat and his keys. "Come on. Let's go."

Darwin didn't ask any questions as he followed Erik out into the crisp, autumn air and Erik was glad for it. He chose a random direction and walked away from the precinct, Darwin at his side as he tried to gather his thoughts. The facts were cold and damning: somehow, within a span of a few days, all of their evidence from Elliot Smith's apartment had gone missing. No one could find the laptop and all the paper files that Erik himself had sorted through and then logged were gone. That, added to Emma's sudden reluctance on the case, led Erik to one grim conclusion.

They finally reached a little coffee shop that Erik visited in the mornings sometimes and he led Darwin inside where they ordered two cups of coffee and commandeered the most private table in the place. It was mid-afternoon, not a high-traffic time for a coffee shop, which made it easier for Erik to feel isolated enough to speak.

"I think there's some kind of cover-up going on," he finally said after a sip of his scalding hot coffee.

Darwin's eyes widened a little but he didn't seem too surprised. "The laptop vanished into thin air," he stated. "What else?"

"All the files with the financials," Erik revealed. "A lot of it was written in shorthand, code, whatever, and I was hoping the laptop might make them make more sense."

"But it's gone."

"Like Houdini."

Darwin rolled his shoulders like he was working a crick on his neck. "You really think it's a cover-up and not just a massive failure on the parts of the idiots we work with?"

Erik shook his head. "I thought of that, but then Emma? With the warrant and the entire thing about backing down? That says someone higher up is putting pressure on her."

Darwin stilled in the action of reaching for his cup. "Do you think she's in on it?"

"I don't know," Erik admitted and it pained him that he couldn't say _of course not_ likd he would've before that morning. "She knows something's up and I'm not sure she's got the best interests of this case in mind."

"So we can't trust our own captain," Darwin said aloud. "That's real great."

"I'm not sure we can trust anybody," Erik told him. "We don't have any idea who's the one who actually took the evidence or who else might be on the same payroll."

"Even better."

They drank their cofee in silence for a few minutes before Darwin had to ask, "How sure are you? This is pretty heavy stuff you're saying."

Erik knew that but it didn't change the facts. "I'm sure enough that I'm going to suggest that neither of us go back in today and that we both lay low to see what that shakes out," he said.

Darwin frowned, eyes troubled. "That sounds pretty damn sure."

Erik nodded. "Yeah. That's the problem."

**

As much as Charles liked to pretend that nothing else mattered when he was working on a story, there were some matters that couldn't be ignored forever, so he spent his morning dealing with the necessities. He paid bills, picked up some groceries, and even revised a fluff magazine piece he'd submitted before the Tabram and Smith cases had stolen all of his attention. He'd come home to a message from Raven that she was going back home after classes that night and Charles rather enjoyed having his place to himself for the first time in a few days. It wasn't that he minded Raven's little visits, but he'd gotten rather used to being on his own over the years and it was always a relief to return to the status quo.

He did not, however, spend his morning thinking about Erik Lehnsherr.

Much.

By the time he'd prepared and consumed a late lunch, Charles had started to feel very satisfied with what he'd accomplished for the day even if none of it was related to his on-going investigation. He was considering a call to the paper to see if Sean could spare a few hours to help him comb more closely through Smith's planner when his landline started ringing.

"Hello?" he said as he answered.

"Charles!" It was Hank and he sounded agitated. "Oh, thank god."

"Hank, what's wrong?"

"Something has happened with the Smith case, but I don't know what," Hank admitted in a rush. "But Detective Lehnsherr stormed through here a little while ago and then stormed out of the building and hasn't been seen since."

The mention of Erik was what caught Charles's attention. "What? Why?"

"I don't know!" Hank said. "I think it has something to do with some evidence? Actually, I was hoping you'd know more."

"Than you?" Charles asked. "Seems unlikely."

"But you have that other source, right?" Hank asked. "I thought maybe he or she knew something."

"My other source is..." _Detective Lehnsherr_ , his mind finished. Charles sighed. "My other source hasn't contacted me today. This is the first I've heard of it."

"Oh." Hank sounded very disappointed.

"Do you know anything about what happened? More than just that it was maybe about evidence?" asked Charles.

"It maybe had something to do with a missing laptop from the Smith case, that's what Levene said when I asked," Hank revealed. "I don't..."

About that time, Charles heard another ring -- this one from his cell phone. He tucked the cordless receiver against his shoulder and hurried into the kitchen to grab his cell phone. When he noticed that the CallerID said it was "Erik" calling, his heart started beating a little faster. "Listen, Hank," Charles began quickly, cutting into his young doctor's rambling. "My other source is on my cell, I need to take this."

"Oh, okay..."

"I'll call you if I figure anything out," Charles hurriedly promised before he disconnected the landline call and answered his cell. "Erik?"

"Charles." He hoped he wasn't imagining the relief he heard in Erik's voice as he said his name. "Where are you?"

"I'm at home," he said. "Why?"

Erik sighed, a long, deep exhalation of breath on the other end of the connection. "Something's come up. With the case," he explained. "I think I'm going to lay low for a while. You should, too. Stay away from my apartment."

Erik was obviously concerned about something, a fact that made Charles frown and clutch his phone a little more tightly. "What something?"

"I don't think I should tell you," Erik said. "And I don't really even know how to explain exactly. It's just -- shit, I don't know."

"Well what are you going to do?" Charles asked, unhappy about the idea of avoiding Erik for "a while." "What do you mean, lay low?"

"I'm not sure if my place is safe," he said quietly. "I'm going to grab some stuff and clear out until I know one way or another."

"Where are you going to go?"

"I don't know, Charles. Some hotel I can pay for in cash, most likely."

The invitation was out before he'd thought better of it. "Come stay here."

He could hear Erik's pause in the static-filled silence on the line. "As in...?"

"My place," Charles said. He realized he didn't even care if it blew his escort cover because the thought of Erik disappearing into the night when he might've been in trouble made something ache in his chest. "No one will come looking for you here."

"That's true..." Erik muttered, but he didn't sound convinced.

"Please, I insist," Charles told him. "I owe you, after all."

Erik was silent for a moment longer before his "Okay, sounds good" let Charles relax a little. "I'm going to take care of some stuff and try to...I won't be there for a few hours. Where do you live?"

Charles rattled off his address. "I'll be here all evening," he promised. "Just come when you can."

"I will," Erik returned. Another pause. "Thanks."

"It's not a problem," he said, and was surprised he meant it. "Just...you'll explain when you get here, yes?"

"Yeah, I will," he said. "Good-bye."

After that, any chance Charles had for quiet self-reflection was shattered because he couldn't ignore the jumbled nerves that had seemed to settle in the pit of his stomach. Erik didn't strike him as the kind to raise an alarm for no reason, so Erik's obvious disquiet left Charles's vivid imagination thinking up a variety of worst-case scenarios. Even more than the story, he was worried about _Erik_ , and he knew he wouldn't get anything else accomplished until he knew what the detective was up against.

It was much later than even Charles had been anticipating when he finally heard his front doorbell ring, and he jumped to answer it, only just remembering to close his laptop and shove it under the sofa before he did so. He opened the door to find Erik standing on his porch, looking as haggard as he'd sounded on the phone, an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, slightly damp from the rain that had started to fall.

"Come in," Charles said, tugging on Erik's arm to bring him inside. "I was starting to get worried."

"Sorry," Erik said, dropping his bag when Charles pointed to the door. "But I decided to ditch my car across town and come by public transportation, just in case."

"You're continuing to worry me," Charles said.

Erik actually managed a weak grin as he ran a hand through his damp hair. "That's not really the plan."

"There are some towels in the bathroom," Charles told him, pointing out the half-bath on the first floor of the brownstone. "Why don't you go dry off? I'll just be in the kitchen, making us some tea."

"Coffee," Erik corrected, even as he nodded. "Thanks."

Charles quickly got the coffee machine brewing while he filled his kettle with water and grabbed two mugs from the cabinet. He could hear the faint sounds of Erik moving around in the bathroom as he gathered his tea-making essentials from various corners of the kitchen where Raven had banished them during her stay.

"Hey, Charles?"

"This way!"

He turned in time to see Erik come into the kitchen, still rubbing a hand towel at his short, damp hair. His coat and jacket were missing, along with his tie, leaving him in nothing but his rumpled shirt and slacks. When Erik saw Charles, he gave him a strange look as he held something out. "This yours?"

When Charles focused on the small, bright item Erik held, he rolled his eyes. "No," he said, snatching the gold tube of very expensive lipstick from Erik's hand. He idly studied the branding and name, deciding that any lipcolor with the word "insolent" in its name was a good choice for his sister. "I believe it's Raven's."

"So, you have a..." Erik made a gesture with his hand, as if prompting Charles to fill in the gaps. "...that lives with you?"

"Well, I have a sister who can't even be trusted to remember her $35 lipsticks, apparently," Charles said with another roll of his eyes. He glanced over and tossed the tube at his fruit basket where it bounced off a banana and into the basket itself.

"Sister? Young, blond, drives a sports car?" Erik asked.

"Yes, how did you...oh, yes!" Charles snapped as he remembered. "You saw her when she came to pick me up from Smith's apartment."

Erik nodded. "I didn't know who she was, but yeah."

"She was staying with me earlier this week but thankfully she's gone on home," Charles said. "If you were worried about that."

"No, I..." Erik shook his head. "That coffee wouldn't be ready, would it?"

Charles could tell that the detective was trying to pull himself together so he quietly went back to his beverage-making and let Erik sink into one of the kitchen chairs and do just that. Erik hung his head, face buried as if whatever weight he carried left him unable to deal with the world. Charles didn't say anything again until he'd set a mug of coffee in front of Erik and had made up his own tea to his precise specifications.

"Any better?"

Erik finally looked up and reached for his coffee. "Yeah, thanks."

"Do you think you're up for telling me what's going on?"

Erik considered him for a moment, obviously thinking, before he began to speak. "I think there's some kind of cover-up happening with the Smith case."

Charles was actually surprised. "What? Why?"

He shook his head. "I don't know why, but it hit today," he explained. "First, I got turned down for a warrant and then my _captain_ told me to back off the case. If that wasn't strange enough, all of our evidence from Smith's apartment disappeared from evidence. There's not even any logs on the laptop to prove it made it to the station in the first place."

"That's a...weighty accusation," Charles finally managed to say.

Erik snorted. "You don't think I know it? Emma – Captain Frost -- I consider her a friend, Charles. But I'm almost convinced she's in this as deep as anyone else."

"But _why_?" Charles insisted. "Did you uncover something you didn't tell me about?"

"Nothing after the stuff with Hellfire," he told him. "So I have no idea of the why. I just know that I can't -- and don't -- trust anyone in the force at the moment. I have no idea who did this or why or how far it goes up...that's why I cleared out, told Darwin to do the same. I stopped by my apartment and grabbed what files and copies I had, and then..."

"...dumped your car and came here," Charles finished. "I can see why you're worried, Erik. I just wish we knew why."

"The Hellfire Club seems to be what triggered it," Erik said, taking another gulp of his coffee. "There must've been someone who didn't want me to know something I could find out from them."

"Or maybe from Elliot's files," Charles added. "A high-profile client, perhaps? We've seen what these scandals do to reputations."

"Tampering with police evidence is more than just paying off a few reporters to bury a story," Erik argued. "If it's a client, they've done more than just hire an escort."

"Maybe murdered that escort for something he saw or knew?" Charles said, shuddering a little at the thought. "What else could be worth the cover-up?"

"That's what I'm wondering," Erik said. "But whoever it is is obviously looking to play hardball."

"Hence your concern about yourself and your partner."

Erik nodded. "I'm not even sure what the hell to do at this point."

Charles could tell from the tension in Erik's body to the way he continually clenched and unclenched his hands that Erik was still reeling from the discoveries he'd made that day. Charles tried to imagine what it would be like to learn that someone might've betrayed him in a similar manner, how it would feel if Moira or Sean did something to break one of the rules that they held dear as reporters. He'd never experienced it, but he had an idea that it wasn't pleasant at all.

Making a decision, he reached over and gently unfurled one of Erik's fists before covering it with his hand in a way he hoped was comforting. "I think what you need to do tonight is stop worrying about it," Charles advised. "You're safe, you have your copies...and you're probably not going to decide anything right now, not the way your mind is racing."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," Charles nodded, watching how Erik slowly let himself return the caress, his thumb moving back-and-forth against edge of Charles's wrist. "I suggest you let me help you relax and we worry about it again in the morning."

And he didn't even mean it as the come-on it sounded like, for once, Charles realized with a terrible pang. His feelings for Erik were starting to tumble out of their neatly defined boxes in Charles's head and that, he'd learned the hard way, was a disaster waiting to happen. But, for the life of him, he couldn't make himself pull away, no matter how much sense it might've made.

Then again, Charles had never been someone accused of having much sense, not when it came to his feelings.

With a smile that was probably too terribly fond, Charles tugged Erik up out of his chair and out of the kitchen, their mugs left forgotten on the table behind them.

**

 _End of Part 7_


	8. Chapter 8

Just like the rest of Charles's house that Erik had seen so far, the living room was impressive, subtly but undeniably expensive from the carpet to the furniture to the entertainment center commanding one wall of the room. When he'd first really noticed the address that Charles had given him over the phone, Erik had almost thought it had been a mistake because it was hard to believe that prostitutes operated out brownstones on the Upper East side; but then he'd remembered Elliot Smith's trendy Tribeca address and he'd been left vaguely ill how much high-end work Charles had to be doing to afford his address.

Erik had too much going on in his head to protest as Charles pushed him down on the sofa before disappearing again, only to return with a bottle of scotch and two glasses.

"This your answer to everything?" Erik asked but there was no bite to it.

Charles smiled as he splashed alcohol into the glasses. "I'm also a fan of chess when I'm wound up but I didn't want to suggest it since I don't know if you play."

"I do," Erik told him, taking the glass Charles held out to him. "But I'm pretty sure it would be a sorry showing if I tried."

"Well save it for some other time, then," Charles said with a wave of his hand, and Erik tried to ignore how Charles's offhand reference to _some other time_ eased something, however small, inside his chest. It really was an inconvenient time to start realizing that Darwin may have been right when he'd said Erik actually liked Charles -- and that it would get him into trouble.

The last thing he needed at the moment was more trouble.

Charles set the bottle on the coffee table, then settled down next to Erik on the sofa, casually and unapologetically in Erik's personal space. He could feel the heat from Charles's body easily enough, the arm Charles had thrown over the back of the sofa was close enough to rest against Erik's neck if he'd let himself lean back into it.

He didn't let himself.

Erik downed the rest of his drink, sitting forward to set it on the table next to the bottle. "Nice scotch," he remarked, for a lack of anything else to say.

"I do like the best," Charles admitted.

Erik nodded to himself, thinking of Charles's tastes in clothes, champagne, scotch -- even sisters. "Nicer house," he heard himself say aloud.

Charles looked at him for a moment before he shrugged. "I'm comfortable here and it serves its purpose. I have to admit that I'm not all that attached to it."

"It's even nicer than Smith's place," Erik replied, even as he asked himself why he was picking at this particular scab when he already had so many bleeding wounds.

Charles caught on to his oblique meaning if the sudden tightening of his mouth was any indication. "Elliot was just starting out in the business," he pointed out. "I've been working closer to a decade than not."

Erik sent him an alarmed look. "Just how old are you?"

That question made Charles laugh at loud. "Probably about the same age you are, give or take a few years. Obviously, older than you were thinking."

"I hadn't..." he began because he hadn't, not really. He'd thought "young" when he'd first seen Charles on the street under the lamplight and hadn't reconsidered that initial impression even as he'd learned more about him.

"Do I strike you as particularly immature?" Charles asked.

He thought of all the words he could use to describe Charles, knowing immature wasn't one of them. "No," he said.

Charles nodded, as if accepting the answer, before he leaned forward to leave his glass next to Erik's on the table. When he sat back, he studied Erik with his bright, blue eyes, long and intense enough that Erik became to shift a little under the scrutiny. "I'm getting the impression that our conversation hasn't helped you relax, my friend."

Erik closed his eyes, sinking back just enough that he could see the faint brush of Charles's arm against shoulders. "It's like every cop's worse nightmare," he explained. "You have to trust each other, or else..." he pulled away from Charles's touch, hunching over with his elbows on his knees."I never thought I'd have to go through this again, not with Emma."

"Again?" Charles asked, voice soft. His hand had migrated to the taut bow of Erik's back, a soothing stroke that Erik felt too raw to shrug off. "You've had this happen before?"

"Not exactly the same but there was some investigations into my old precinct for corruption," he explained. "Payoffs, turning a blind eye, that kind of thing. It's why I agreed to transfer under Emma when she asked, because I didn't want to get burned like that again."

"But you did anyway," Charles said. His hand crept up until his fingers were drifting lightly over the sweep of Erik's neck. "I _am_ sorry, Erik."

"I watched good cops go down over it," Erik told him. "I found out that the ones you thought were the good ones weren't." Erik straightened a little, glancing over at Charles's solemn, sympathetic expression. "It's a risk to trust any of them right now, no matter how much I want to."

"I can see why you're worried," Charles told him, his hand still at its idle exploration of Erik's back, neck, shoulders. "And why you want to be cautious. It's a terrible lesson to have learned."

Erik knew he could trust Darwin but with his certainty in Emma shaken so completely, he didn't dare extend it to include anyone else from the department. "I'm on my own with this," he told Charles. "I can't pull Darwin into this more than necessary, but I've got to figure it out. If I let it go, I'm giving in and I won't do that."

"Erik." Charles tugged on his arm until Erik was sitting up straight again. He leaned in a little, his hand still wrapped around Erik's bicep. "You won't have to give up. We _will_ figure this out, I swear."

"There is no _we_ on this," Erik protested, pulling away to put a little distance between them.

Charles scowled. "You're trying to cut me out _now_?"

"This isn't -- everything's _changed_ ," Erik told him, not concerned with the sudden sharpness in his tone. "This isn't just some john killing pros or even some rich asshole who put his secrets above Elliot's life. This is someone with the money or the clout or both to completely shut down this investigation. This isn't the kind of person _you_ need to cross."

Charles looked even more unhappy. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

"It's _dangerous_ , Charles," Erik finally bit out. "I can't let you continue to have anything to do with this."

His answer seemed to mollify Charles somewhat but Erik could see the rising determination in the set of his jaw. "That won't stop me, even if you try to shut me out."

Erik let out a sound, half-growl, half-sigh, all frustration. He wanted to shake him. "Is this really worth your neck?"

Charles's eyes were steady and earnest. "Is it worth yours?" he parroted back, not giving Erik a chance to say a word before he continued, "It obviously is and it's worth mine, too. That's why I got involved in the first place and why you let me." His face softened, and he melted against Erik like he couldn't hold himself apart any longer. "You're not alone, Erik. Don't you dare think you are."

Erik was too tired to fight against himself and Charles. He let himself lean into Charles's warmth, sliding his closest arm loosely around his waist. "You care this much about who murdered Elliot Smith?"

Charles's hand guided Erik's head around so that he couldn't evade the painful sincerity in his too-blue eyes. "I care this much about what happens to _you_."

Erik wasn't sure who kissed who first, but he did know that he was the one who pulled Charles closer as their mouths met and clashed, and he was the one who started pressing Charles back until he was flat on sofa with Erik stretched over him. But it was Charles who was working frantically at the buttons of Erik's shirt even as he refused to break the kiss, his hands moving lower to tug at Erik's belt as Erik bit at his bottom lip, soothing the sting with his tongue.

Something about the moment, though, snapped Erik back into his brain, reminding him of all the reasons he'd promised himself he wouldn't sleep with Charles again, no matter how much he wanted to. Erik yanked away from Charles's hands and mouth, sliding away until his back was against the far armrest. Charles propped himself up by his elbows, blinking in confusion. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry," Erik said, because he was but he -- "We can't."

"Why can't we?" Charles asked. His red, kiss-bruised mouth contrasted harshly with the frown it now formed. "You keep saying that and I don't understand."

"I...you...it doesn't..." Erik couldn't find the words to convey what he felt about Charles, all the want and ambivalence and wariness that went into it.

"Is this about me being...me?" Charles asked with a raised eyebrow. "I told you before, Erik. This isn't about the work."

"I know that, but I don't..." Erik trailed off, frustrated. "I guess I don't understand."

"Understand?" Charles sat up, inching across the sofa until they were no longer separated by the cushions.

"The difference," Erik said. "How you keep it separate?"

Charles's eyes narrowed, a clear sign of annoyance. "Have I asked you to pay for anything, Erik? Because that would be a significant difference."

Erik responded with a stony stare of his own. "Do you ever...I mean, how do you...?"

Charles crossed the last bit of distance between them, until he was almost sitting in Erik's lap. "Let me ask _you_ what I think you're trying to ask me. Do you care less deeply about your bed partners because you care about the victims you seek justice for?"

"No," he said with a roll of his eyes.

Charles reached for his hand, cradling it in both of his as he used a finger to trace the network of veins running just under his skin. "When you touch me, does it mean less because you use your hands to solve crimes, fire a gun?"

"Of course not."

Charles looked up and met his eyes. "However I use my words or my body for my job, that's all it is. They're just tools, like your hands or your eyes when you're on the job. It's not the same as my heart or my mind." He looked away and Erik could see he was struggling with something; but when he looked up a moment later, there was nothing but an intense kind of determination burning in his eyes. "I need you to understand this -- what I may say or do for my job, I don't want that to be about us, all right? I need you to promise you'll remember that?"

"If I say no?" Erik asked.

He shrugged, letting go of Erik's hand. "I do eventually get tired of rejection," he said. "But it won't change what I said before. You're not alone in this, Erik. You've just told me that this was dangerous and you didn't have a soul you could trust. Do you think I could just walk away and pretend that I don't care what happens? Not with the case, but with _you_?"

Erik decided he didn't want to hear anything else -- not Charles's explanations, not the painfully obvious way his voice betrayed as much as his words did, things that made him wonder (and hope) that he wasn't the only one who was entirely too invested in their barley-a-week-old acquaintance. Instead of letting another word past Charles's lips, Erik sealed his to them, cutting off all sound other than a satisfying moan. Charles wriggled forward just a little more until he _was_ sitting in Erik's lap, a delicious weight against Erik's erection which hadn't subsided, even through the awkwardness of the conversation.

He thought Charles might pick up where he left off with the removal of Erik's belt but Charles broke the latest kiss and pulled away enough to breathe. "You once expressed interest in seeing my bedroom," he said, hands still moving restlessly over Erik's chest where it was left bare by his unbuttoned shirt. "Remember?"

"What about it?" Erik asked, tugging Charles's shirt off.

"I thought maybe you'd like to renew that suggestion?" Charles asked between nips at Erik's jaw.

"Yeah?"

Charles nodded, pulling back again. A shadow crossed over his face and he touched fingers to Erik's mouth. "It's been a long time since..."

Erik thought maybe it might've been significant that Charles wanted him in his bed, that it might've been one of the ways that Charles made the separation between his body and his heart. If it was, he wanted it.

He kissed Charles again, then nodded. "Lead the way."

**

When Charles woke the next morning, Erik was wrapped around him, warm and heavy with sleep. He had one arm flung over Charles and, when Charles tried to wiggle his way out of bed without waking him, Erik's arm tightened around him.

"Where are you going?"

"Downstairs?" he replied, rolling over to face Erik when his hold loosened enough to allow the movement.

Erik looked entirely too contemplative as he met Charles's eyes. "Do you always sneak out of bed?"

It was a perceptive observation, one Charles had no intention of discussing, so he leaned forward and kissed Erik. Erik returned the kiss eagerly, letting his hand trail down the line of Charles's side. As much as he liked it, Charles pulled away. "Tea," he said, giving Erik one more kiss before he slid out of bed. "It's an addiction, I'm afraid."

Charles made a grab for his robe and valiantly ignored how he could feel the pull of Erik's hot gaze on his naked back before he wrapped the terry cloth around him. Once in the bathroom, he cleaned up the best he could without a proper shower, then threw on the sweats and T-shirt he tended to wear around the house. Then, he padded down the stairs, toward the kitchen and his kettle.

He cleared away the mugs they'd abandoned the night before, which reminded him of the glasses they'd left in the living room. Charles collected them and his cell phone, quickly filing through the missed calls and messages. There was one text message from Moira: _Anything new on the story?_ and a voicemail from Hank, asking if he'd talk to his source about whatever happened with the case. Charles deleted the message with a sigh, knowing he'd never return it to give Hank the answers he wanted.

Charles had texted Moira back with a _Maybe - details later_ and had started the coffee maker when he heard the sound of footsteps -- Erik, coming into the kitchen, naked except for the towel hanging low on his hips. His hair was damp, obviously fresh from the shower, beads of moisture still clinging to his skin. Charles gave him a pointed once-over. "You could've borrowed my robe," he said. "It'd only be fair."

Erik snorted, flicking a thumb over his shoulder. "I just needed to grab my bag."

Charles didn't resist the impulse to cross the space between them to kiss him, dragging his hands over the flushed, damp skin of Erik's back. Erik returned the kiss with no hesitation, letting out a noise of disapproval when Charles eased away. "Your coffee should be ready by the time you're dressed," he told him. "Then we can discuss -- whatever you'd like."

Erik's fingers brushed just under the waistband of Charles's sweats, against the jut of one hipbone. "You could always give me a hand."

Charles grinned at the suggestion and he knew, from the way it made Erik's eyes darken a little, that it was the shamelessly flirty one he tended to throw around when he was drunk, though he had no such excuse at the moment. "I have all ideas that if I go upstairs with you and that towel, we won't get anything of importance accomplished today."

Erik was leaning in with very clear _intent_ when they were both startled by the loud and unexpected sound of Charles's front door banging open.

"Charles," he heard Raven's voice call out as Erik jerked away from him like he'd been burned. "I know you're probably not even up yet but ---" Raven's rambling came to a stop as she reached the kitchen and caught sight of Erik, still just in his towel. Her eyes flew to Charles's, going wide. "Oh, my god."

Charles sighed. "Raven..."

But her eyes had already trailed back to Erik who was obviously uncomfortable with her appreciative appraisal. "Hey there, handsome," she said, only making Erik's expression grew more stony. To Charles, she said, "I didn't expect you to have company or I would've called."

"I thought I just packed you off," he returned. "What do you want?"

"I can't find my favorite lipstick, actually," she said. "I'm pretty sure I left it here, so I'll just go up to the guest room and look around..."

Charles reached into fruit basket and tossed the tube at his sister with no little force. He was slightly disappointed that she caught it. "Problem solved. Good _bye_ , Raven."

"What? No!" She shook her head. "You have to introduce us!"

Charles looked to the ceiling and begged any deities listening for patience. "Raven, this is Erik," he said, waving a hand between them. "Erik, this is my sister, Raven."

"Nice to meet you, _Erik_ ," she all but purred. Charles caught the speculative gleam in her eye. He gave her a hard look in warning but she ignored him. "So exactly how did you take up with Charles?"

Erik looked alarmed to be faced down by the manic bundle of energy that Raven could sometimes be, and Charles felt a similar feeling overtake him. Things were too delicate all around to have Raven say something completely inappropriate and bring it all down on his head. "Now isn't a good time," he told her.

"Oh, I think it's the best time," she began, but was cut off when Charles snagged her arm and hustled her out of the kitchen. "Hey!"

"Not now, Raven," he said in a low, fierce tone. "I mean it."

She yanked her arm out of his grip. "What's going on?" she asked, equally low and fierce. "You're acting weird."

Charles spared a glance back over his shoulder to make sure Erik was out of hearing distance. "I can't explain right now."

She frowned more deeply. "Are you in trouble? Tell me!"

"Raven!"

"I'm not leaving until you tell me," she whispered angrily.

Charles shot her a dark look. "Stay _here_ ," he ordered before heading back into the kitchen where Erik was still loitering, awkward and a little unsure.

"Sorry about that," Charles said.

A flash of humor slid across Erik's face. "Your sister is..."

"Completely horrible when she wants to be, I know," Charles said. "It seems she's in the mood for a little sister-brother chat."

"I could leave if you need me too."

"No," Charles told him firmly. "I'll have Raven run me out to grab something for breakfast, and then I'll shoo her off, I promise."

"You don't have to," Erik began, but Charles cut him off with a quick kiss.

"Oh, I want to," he said. "So just make yourself at home until I get back."

Raven was still waiting in the living room where Charles told her to, but she looked like it was killing her to comply. She opened her mouth as he approached, but he brushed past her, looking for the pair of old loafers he kept handy for quick trips outside. "Charles..."

"Raven," he cut her off. "Get your coat now. We're leaving."

"We are?" she asked. "You're not even dressed to go outside."

Charles slipped on his shoes and threw a coat over his T-shirt and sweats. "Now, Raven," he said, holding the door open. She glared but followed him out the door and down to her car. She unlocked the doors and slid inside, Charles a beat behind her. As soon as the doors on both sides slid shut, she turned to glare at him. "What the hell is going on, Charles?"

"Erik isn't just an overnight guest," he explained.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's your latest pick-up."

" _No_ , Raven, he's not," Charles told her. "He's...I guess you'd say one of my sources. And he came to me because he's in a precarious position at the moment and I didn't need you to say something to make that worse."

Raven shook her head. "You're sleeping with one of your sources? I thought you weren't doing that anymore."

"It's really more complicated than that," he said.

Her eyes got wide. "Oh my god, tell me you're not screwing around with a hooker!"

Charles couldn't help the hysteria-tinged laughter that bubbled up. "No, I assure you, I'm not."

His sister eyed him like she was worried for his mental health. "There's something else going on here."

"Erik is a homicide detective," Charles revealed with a sigh.

"And you got him to give up info about his case?" Raven asked, surprised. "Most cops aren't into helping reporters."

"That's one of the reasons I didn't want you running off at the mouth," Charles told her. "He doesn't precisely _know_ that I'm a reporter."

Raven's face showed her confusion -- and her creeping dread. "Then what does he think you're doing snooping around his case?"

Charles debated with himself but decided he needed to tell someone and Raven was a better choice than anyone else he had in his life. "He's under the impression -- which I did not give him -- that I'm a hooker."

"Oh, god. Oh, _god_ ," Raven repeated. "He's the guy, right? The one that made you ask me if you looked like a hustler."

Charles nodded. "Of course, he didn't fill me in on his erroneous conclusion until _after_ we'd..."

Raven covered her face with her hands. "Only you, Charles."

"I'm beginning to feel like that, yes."

"That's been a week ago," she pointed out. "You still haven't cleared it up?"

"At first, it was easier to let him keep thinking that to get the information I needed," Charles said. "And now...he won't take too kindly to finding out that I've been lying to him. I don't want to risk it until I have to."

Raven was quiet for a moment. "It sounds like you maybe..."

"Do you mind running me around the corner, love?" he interrupted. "I promised Erik breakfast and I'd like to get some bagels."

Raven's mouth tightened into a frown but she started her car and pulled out into traffic, heading toward the little shop she knew Charles preferred. Despite his state of undress, Charles ran in to get a half-dozen bagels while Raven idled outside. When he dashed back into the car after his purchase, he could see something in her face that made him think she'd spent her time alone thinking of something to say he wasn't going to like.

As soon as she was back in the flow of traffic, he found out correct he was with that assessment. "You don't usually bring guys home when you pick them up."

"Yes."

"And it definitely wasn't a good idea to bring Erik to your house if you didn't want him to find out who you really are. It's a big risk."

"I know that," he said. "I didn't think that through as clearly as I should've when I made invitation."

Raven gave him an irritated look that meant she was doubting his sanity in a completely different way from before. "Do you know you get this look on your face when you talk about him? Everything goes all soft." Quieter, she added, "Like when you used to talk about Gabrielle."

"Let's not go there, hmm?"

"But you're just going to let it blow up in your face," she continued. "Because you can't commit to save your damn life."

"The damage has been done, Raven," he told her. "When I tell him the truth -- and I will, eventually -- he won't understand. We've...maybe if I had told him before but things have...progressed to a point where...it doesn't matter."

"Don't you think it's worth the risk to lay it out now instead of later?"

By now, they were back in front of his brownstone and Charles turned to Raven to say one last thing before he exited the car. "It won't matter when I tell him, Raven. It'll be over. I'd rather get out of this mess with my story intact, at least then it'll be worth destroying everything else."

"Charles!" He could hear her muffled cry from within the closed car, but he didn't slow down to see what she wanted to say. It was a concern that been plaguing him for a few days and the night before he'd almost confessed the truth but he'd held back for the exact reason he'd told Raven.

For the first time since his divorce, Charles had found something -- someone -- he'd wanted to hold onto and it had been doomed before he had even realized it.

On that chipper thought, Charles steeled himself and headed inside.

**


	9. Chapter 9

As soon as Charles disappeared with his sister, Erik grabbed his bag from the foyer and went upstairs to trade his towel for some actual clothing. Since he wasn't going into work, he opted for the casual items he preferred, then he tracked down his phone and started making the calls he needed to, ones that were better made when Charles wasn't around.

First Erik called Emma and pretended to apologize for his behavior the day before. She was magnanimous in response to his groveling, which made him glad he was putting the act on over the phone and not in person where she'd be able to see the real irritation behind it. Still it was worth the humiliation because Emma readily approved his request for a few days off so he could "cool down."

During his too-long conversation with Emma, Erik wandered through Charles's house, making idle note of what he saw and didn't see. There was no computer that he could find, though he was sure Charles had one, especially given the fancy phone he carried. There were few very homey touches around the place; it didn't seem much more personal than Elliot Smith's house had seemed, although Charles had remarked on it.

Just about the time Emma had given her permission for those days of leave, Erik stumbled upon the only real sign of personality in the house, which were a few framed photos scattered among the books that lined the shelves. A few were of Charles at different ages, though obviously much younger than he was now, and there was one of him and his sister, at what looked like Charles's graduation from some school, given his robes. But the photo that caught his eye was the one on the highest shelf -- it was of Charles, roughly about the age he looked now, with a much older man. They were both dressed in suits, with the older man's arm slung casually over Charles's shoulder as they faced the camera. He wasn't sure what about it held his attention but Erik couldn't quite look away, even as he ended the conversation with Emma.

Almost immediately Erik dialed Darwin's cell phone, who he knew was waiting for word from him about what to do today. He told his partner to go in like nothing was wrong and to officially work on any case but Smith's.

"What about you?" Darwin asked.

"I'm going to work the case on my own, where no one can interfere," he said. "I might call you if I need something I can't get without access to police databases."

"But who's going to be watching your back?" Darwin asked.

"I have someone," Erik said, thinking of Charles and his promises from the night before.

"You mean your rentboy?" Darwin wanted to know.

"Darwin..."

"I'd call him something else but I don't even know his name!"

"Charles," Erik said with a sigh.

"Charles what?" Darwin asked. "Or did you not get around to exchanging last names?"

They hadn't and Erik doubted Charles would offer it up if he asked. However... "If I give you an address, can you pull the ownership and rental history on it?"

"Yeah?" Darwin said. "As soon as I get in, sure. But why ---"

"I'll text it," he said, cutting off Darwin's questions. "Thanks," he added, right before he disconnected the call.

After he'd texted Charles's address to Darwin, Erik slid his phone into his jeans pocket and continued to stare at the photograph. As nice as Charles's looked in the photo in his suit with a slyly amused look on his face, it was the older man who kept drawing his attention. He realized after a moment that the older man looked familiar and he wracked his brains thinking of where he might've seen him before.

It took another minute before it finally hit him and shock swept over him. The man in the photo with Charles was Brian Xavier, former award-winning reporter and currently the editor-in-chief for the _Times_. He wasn't the kind of local power player that Erik should've necessarily recognized but he'd swept in and out of Emma's more than once early in her captaincy, working with her on some coverage of the corruption scandals that she had hoped would've been more favorable for the department in general. It hadn't worked that way, of course, but Erik remembered the man for his arrogant demeanor, which had done little to endear the journalism profession to him when he'd already been jaded by the biased, damning coverage the department had received.

The question in Erik's mind, though, was what Brian Xavier was doing in a relatively recent photo of Charles, looking strangely easy in each other's space. Their pose spoke of a familiarity that ruled out a chance encounter at some kind of event, but that fact only left Erik with more questions than answers.

He didn't get much more time to ponder the question because he heard Charles coming through the front door. He turned away from the photos in time to see Charles with a bag in hand as he entered the living room.

"Sorry that took so long," he said. "But Raven's hard to deter once she gets something in her head."

"A family trait?" Erik asked, a gentle tease.

"I wouldn't know," Charles said with a grin. He held up the brown paper bag he carried. "I've got bagels and you don't have coffee. We should remedy that."

Breakfast was a quiet affair, nothing more than the admittedly-good bagels Charles had from the shop, with several different tubs of topping as well. Erik knew he was quiet because his mind was heavy with questions -- about the case, about Charles, about what he was going to do next. He didn't know if Charles's mind was occupied similarly or if something else had him in deep contemplation, but it was obvious that he was thinking as hard about something as Erik was as they chewed their bagels in silence.

It was Charles who spoke first as he cleared away the debris from their meal. "You said yesterday that you still made some copies of some of the evidence that was stolen?"

Erik nodded as he stood up to refill his coffee cup. "Just some photocopies I took of some of the files that looked like financials or maybe even coded lists of some kind. But it was just a few of them -- I figured if I cracked the code, I could pull everything out again."

Charles leaned back against the sink and regarded him with something uncertain in his expression. He crossed his arms as he asked, "Do you think you've missed anything in them that you'll find if you go over them?"

"No," Erik said. "I mean, it's possible but...not really."

"But a new lead would be very helpful, yes?"

"Of course," Erik said. "Why are you asking?"

Charles sighed and continued to look uncertain and...nervous, which was something Erik hadn't seen often in their short acquaintance. "I might have something," he revealed. "Just...keep an open mind, all right?"

Erik nodded but he couldn't help but be deeply suspicious as Charles ducked out of the kitchen, telling him to stay put. A few minutes later Charles came back with something leather and brown in his hand which he laid on the table in front of Erik like an offering.

"What is it?" asked Erik, eyeing it for clues. It looked like a notebook of some kind with an expensive leather case.

"It's Elliot Smith's date planner," Charles announced.

Erik shot him an incredulous look, noticing that Charles was still standing at his hand, arms crossed and face pinched. "Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Where did you get it?" Erik demanded.

"I stole it from his apartment the night we visited," Charles admitted. "It was in one of the drawers in his bedroom."

Erik choked on his anger, sharpened as it was by betrayal. "You stole evidence? After I agreed to cooperate with you?"

"Evidence you wouldn't have found if it wasn't for me finding Angel," Charles reminded him. "Evidence you wouldn't have if I hadn't because someone stole all of yours."

"Is that your excuse?" Erik wanted to know.

"No, it's just fact," Charles said, only sounding slightly sorry for his behavior. "I didn't know whether you were going to stop working with me after I helped you find out Elliot's identity and...I know it wasn't very honest of me but it worked out in the end."

Erik could've held on to his anger at Charles for the act, but he could see where it would've been counterproductive, given he was one of the only allies he had at the moment. He knew he should've probably been more wary of someone who lied to him and stole evidence but Charles's arguments were at least logical, even if they were illegal and unscrupulous. With a resigned sigh of his own, he pulled the planner toward him and flipped it open. "Did you find anything?"

Charles relaxed a little at Erik's acceptance and slid into the chair beside him at the table. "I checked the entries around the week of his murder, but I hadn't had the chance to look much more closely."

"Time is about all I have at the moment," Erik said with grim humor as he flipped quickly through the first few pages that covered what Elliot had been doing the first few weeks of the year. He picked up the book and cradled its spine in one hand as he used the other to thumb through the pages looking for anything interesting that might help him figure out the mystery confronting them.

Someone had murdered Elliot Smith and another someone -- although Erik's gut told him it was the same person -- was willing to go to great lengths to cover up something they might've learned from either The Hellfire Club or Elliot Smith's personal papers.

And the only clue he had that wasn't in the hands of whoever was sabotaging his investigation was the date planner Charles had stolen from Smith's apartment.

There was some irony to be found there, Erik was sure, but he was in no mood to appreciate it.

"Anything jumping out at you?" Charles asked after a moment.

"No," he admitted, laying the planner flat on the table. "I guess we have to go page by page."

"Something I had been avoiding," Charles said. "But if it's all we have..."

It was when Charles grabbed one corner to pull the planner toward him that Erik noticed all the loose papers stuffed into its back pocket. He grabbed the opposite corner and tugged, causing Charles to release it and glance up in confusion. "Something wrong?"

Erik began to pluck all the crumpled paper from the planner pocket. "Did you look through all this?"

"No," Charles said.

Erik began smoothing out receipts and laying them in a line on the table. "Let's start here."

Charles nodded and took a small stack of papers from the mound of them Erik had created when he'd pulled them from the planner. Like breakfast, they worked mostly in silence, creating groups of like items on the fly as they came across them. What they learned quickly was that Elliot seemed to do a lot of shopping and a lot of keeping receipts for them. They were all from expensive stores that Erik couldn't imagine ever affording, while Charles seemed to be very familiar with many of them. While most of the receipts were from the city, there was a significant number that came from Albany, which neither Erik nor Charles knew much about.

"Erik," Charles said after a while, voice humming with a kind of energy that made Erik think he'd found something.

"Yeah?"

"Look." He held out three cards, two business-looking ones and the other hard plastic with a reader strip on the back. "These two are cards for somewhere called the Meridian Building and they both have dates and times hand-written on the back. And this one..." Charles held up the hard plastic one. "...it looks like a building key card, also for the Meridian."

Erik took one of the cards with the dates written on it, the one bearing "13 July @ 10" on its back. The card stock was heavy and slightly textured, bearing the building logo on one side, along with its address and the manager's number. It was probably something people used as appointment reminder cards or maybe were given out to prospective leasers. By themselves, Erik probably wouldn't have thought much about them, but coupled with the key card, it seemed like a decent lead.

"Any idea where this building is?" he asked Charles.

He shrugged. "But it's something, yes?"

Erik nodded, still looking at the card in his hand. "It's something," he agreed. He finally looked up and met Charles's excited gaze. "How do you feel about stakeouts?"

Charles grinned a little. "I've never been on one," he said. "But I can't wait to find out."

**

They finished looking through Elliot Smith's datebook but it didn't turn up much, the dated pages themselves filled with abbreviations and code that they probably had little chance in coming to understand in a timely manner. Erik was up and down in his chair throughout their search, stepping into the hallway to confer with his partner via cell phone in low tones. Charles raised his eyebrow the third time Erik did and the officer finally offered an explanation.

"Darwin's trying to close up some of our other cases," he told him. "If it was about this case, I'd tell you but since it's not..."

"Sure you aren't paying me back for the thing with the day planner?" Charles asked.

Erik frowned, "I don't play games," he told him. "If it was a deal breaker, I'd just tell you."

Charles nodded his understanding, trying to ignore the stab of guilt at Erik's declaration. He could hear Raven's voice in his head telling him to come clean _this minute, Charles!_ but he couldn't make himself. He'd reached a point where forgiveness wasn't possible -- maybe if he'd confessed the night before, when he'd felt things start to change between them, but he hadn't and there was no use dwelling on it.

That left the story to focus on.

Around mid-afternoon, Erik went to pick up his car for their stakeout of the Meridian building and Charles used the time alone to contact Moira.

"You can't leave me hanging like that!" she protested when the call connected. "Tell me what you've learned."

He told her about the missing evidence in vague terms, trying to rely more on what he'd learned from Hank than what he knew from Erik. Still there were things only Erik knew -- like Frost's order to back off -- that were too pertinent to leave out.

"What have you stumbled into?" Moira asked, tone somewhere between worried and impressed. "This is starting to sound serious in a completely different way than we thought."

Charles laughed in agreement, thinking of when it had been simpler back when they'd thought they were dealing with a serial killer. "It's going fine for the moment, but I'll let you know if anything else changes."

"Be careful," she warned.

"Dad has an emergency number," he assured her. "You take care yourself."

Erik appeared just as the sky was starting to turn darken; it wasn't particularly late but the winter light patterns had firmly taken hold of the day. They stopped for coffee (for Erik) before they circled around the block until they found a prime spot in front of the Meridian building. It wasn't very impressive, just a few floors, with something like twenty-odd commercial spaces available for rent. Much of the bottom floor was taken up with a dance studio, and Charles watched through the lit windows as a company of teenaged ballerinas pirouetted across the shiny wooden floor.

"How long will we remain to watch the building?" he asked a little while later as the dancers dispersed from his view, the class obviously over for the evening.

"At least a few hours," Erik said. He was wrapped in his coat since he'd cut the engine as soon as they'd parked. "I doubt we'll see something tonight but there's always a chance."

"Elliot could've been meeting anyone in any of those twenty-plus offices," Charles said. "There's really no way to know."

"Before I came to get you, I stopped by and checked his key card," Erik said. "It won't let me up past reception."

"So either his access is periodic or someone was smart enough to de-authorize his card when things went south," Charles mused.

"Seems like," Erik agreed. "So I've got Darwin digging up a list of who's who in the building and see if we can find out that way. But until then..."

"We stake out," Charles finished with a little smile.

Waiting had never been Charles's favorite part of anything, even if he'd done his own fair share of staking out in his own investigations. It was actually worse to have Erik there with him, entirely too distracting for Charles's taste and an uncomfortable reminder of his current moral dilemma, all wrapped up in a very tempting package. He didn't even want to risk checking his messages for fear that Erik's detective's eye could catch something he didn't want him to in such close quarters.

"Is there nothing you and your partner do to alleviate the boredom during these things?" Charles asked, partly to distract himself and partly because he was just interested in finding out more about Erik.

Erik shook his head. "If Darwin can get away with it, he spends the time texting his boyfriend," he said. "Apparently the long hours I make him work leaves him the doghouse more often than not."

"Unconventional jobs can do that to the best relationships," Charles said a little more wistfully than he'd meant, thinking of Gabrielle. They probably had been doomed from the start, but his dedication to his job hadn't helped matters, not when it meant he was out at all hours and sometimes for days, doing whatever was needed to get the story he was chasing.

"Sounds like you know from experience," Erik said and Charles could detect a slight edge in his voice.

"I'm sure that's not surprising," Charles said.

Erik snorted, twisting a little in his seat so that Charles was no longer stealing glances at his profile. "A lot of bad luck at it?"

"I haven't tried in a very long time," Charles admitted truthfully. "There was once, many years ago but we weren't...compatible."

"You or your job?" Erik asked.

"It's hard to separate the two," he said, thinking not of his cover story but his real job. The Xavier siblings seemed to bleed ink, just like their father, and Charles had always known he'd wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps, no matter what. Even Raven, who'd made such a show and point of her independence couldn't quite escape, even if working on her MFA in Creative Writing struck Brian Xavier, newspaperman, as an affront to his legacy. "Are you and your job so easily pulled apart?"

"That's different," Erik protested.

Charles raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"

"I think so," Erik told him. "Honestly, Charles, can you tell me that you grew up dreaming of doing this with the rest of your life?"

Charles knew that Erik was making his case against Charles's fabricated lifestyle as a male escort, but Erik's insistence on the point still rankled. "And if my answer is yes, I did?" he said. "Would that change how you feel about me?"

Erik's gaze didn't waver, flinty where his eyes met Charles's. "No, it wouldn't."

"But you still would prefer if I did something else?"

"Of course I do," Erik told him. "For one, it's illegal."

"Not everywhere."

"And it's dangerous," Erik continued. "You put yourself in unnecessary risk."

"Because being a cop is a very safe occupation," Charles countered.

Erik sent him a cutting glare for that. "On top of all that," he kept going, as if he'd gained momentum that wouldn't let him stop. "It's not exactly a profession with much security."

"Even though it is the world's oldest profession," Charles said without thinking, a mix of humor, horror and annoyance driving his rapid-fire replies.

"You can't do it forever," Erik said, still frowning. "That's not the way it works."

Charles frowned, too, as he wondered at Erik's words. "Are you implying that I'm going to get old and ugly?"

"Damn it, Charles, that's not what I'm saying at all," Erik bit out. "I'm saying you could be doing a lot of other things with your life."

Charles was still annoyed -- with himself, with Erik, with the situation, with _life_ \-- but he could see the honesty in Erik's eyes and it soothed over his ruffled feelings a little. It wasn't a surprise that Erik, a cop, would have issues with someone he was intimate with being others, especially for money; something about him had screamed old-fashioned in a way that reminded Charles of his father, a fact that only made the entire conversation even more horrifying.

Still, he was exasperated as he answered, "I don't know what you have in mind for us after this but there's one thing you won't be able to do, Erik, and that's change who I am. No matter how much you might want to the more you learn."

"I'm beginning to realize that."

Charles sighed, sitting back in his seat as he let his eyes focus once again on the mostly-dark building they were watching. "Perhaps conversation wasn't such a good idea."

They sat in silence for a while, so fraught with the things left unsaid between them that it could've been minutes or hours for all Charles could measure the passage of time. He hadn't wanted to instigate an argument and he wasn't entirely certain he had, but he could see that he hadn't done much to avoid it, either. His own culpability, however, didn't diminish Erik's.

Given what he knew of Erik thus far, it surprised Charles that their uncomfortable stalemate was broken by the detective, as those same lovely fingers that Charles had once drunkenly complimented brushed against his, where his hand rested between them on the seat. When he turned startled eyes to Erik, expecting an explanation, what he got was a half-crooked smile. "Maybe we should've went with that childhood discussion after all."

Charles smiled in return, letting his fingers mingle with Erik's in something very close to hand-holding, something he hadn't done in a very long time. "We could," he said. "But I think you'll find mine very disappointing."

"Oh?"

He nodded. "No abuse, no childhood trauma, nothing to explain or mitigate my life choices to your satisfaction."

Erik's fingers tightened around his briefly. "I would never want you to have had a bad childhood. It's not..."

Charles winced. "I apologize," he told him, slinking a little closer in the seat. He couldn't get too close because of the gear shaft, but he moved close enough that he could transfer the caress of his fingers from Erik's to his jean-clad thigh. "I shouldn't have said that. I suspect you're no stranger to unpleasant childhoods."

"It wasn't great," Erik said. "But it could've been worse."

It was such an understatement but Charles wasn't sure if he wanted to roll his eyes or throw his arms around Erik. He chose a version of the latter, sliding one arm over his shoulder while the other grabbed at the neck of shirt to drag him close enough to kiss. Charles let it get more heated than he'd planned given their current situation but he couldn't quite ignore that other voice in the back of his head, this one close to his own, that told him whatever strange, wonderful thing he'd found with this very complicated man, he was on borrowed time with it.

"This really isn't proper stakeout behavior," Erik pointed out as he reluctantly released Charles's mouth, though he only did so to trail his lips down Charles's throat.

"Nonsense," Charles laughed, breathless and throaty as he ran his hand through Erik's hair. "I have a perfect view of the building and we've managed the perfect cover."

Erik sighed against his skin and finally pulled away. "You mean we're begging for some beat cop to knock on the windows and cite us for indecency."

"If that's what we're going for, you should at least let me blow you," Charles said, completely deadpan. "It'll make the court appearance more interesting."

Erik looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to die or kill Charles or take him up on the offer immediately, which Charles considered a victory. He cleared his throat a few times before he spoke, shooting a dark look over at Charles. "Stakeout," he repeated, pointing toward the building. "Watch the building."

"Fine." Charles slid back more properly into his own seat. "But I think I've decided that I don't like stakeouts."

Erik's snort of amusement kept the grin on Charles's face for the rest of the evening as they passed an uneventful and fruitless night watching the darkened exterior of the Meridian.

**

 _End of Part 9_


	10. Chapter 10

Given the late night Erik had spent on stakeout at the Meridian Building, Darwin's call came much too early the next morning.

"You're beginning to make a habit of this," Erik told Darwin as he slid out of bed, reaching around on the floor for his jeans.

"Payback for years of abuse," Darwin replied, not sounding the least bit apologetic even in the face of Erik's irritation.

Erik tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he pulled on his jeans, glancing back toward the bed to make sure his activity hadn't awakened Charles. For once, he hadn't risen earlier than Erik and disappeared; Charles was still deeply asleep, face smashed against the pillow in what looked like a very uncomfortable position. Erik snorted softly under his breath before he quietly stepped out into the hall. "Well?" he asked into the phone as he headed down the stairs of Charles's brownstone. "I assumed you called and woke me up because you had something, not just because you missed me."

"I take it the stakeout was a bust?" Darwin asked.

Erik sighed. "It was always a long shot."

"True."

"So what did you find out, Darwin?" he asked impatiently.

"Oh, by the way," Darwin said, and Erik was sure it was for effect. "If I had wanted to be a real estate agent, I wouldn't have went to the _police academy_."

"Muñoz...."

"Okay." Erik could hear something shuffling in the background, probably papers or files. "So I checked out everything I could find on the Meridian building, there was nothing very interesting there. Most of the office space seems to be rented out to legit businesses who've been operating there for more than a few years. The dance studio's been there the longest."

"So you didn't find anything."

" _However_ ," Darwin continued. "Only two of the offices have been rented out within the past year. I figured it might be a good way to start looking at it, you know? Anyway, that's where it got weird because I recognized one of the new leasers."

That caught Erik's attention. "What's the name?"

"Janos Quested."

Erik frowned, even though Darwin couldn't see it. "Never heard of him."

"That's why it's weird," Darwin explained. "I don't know him from an investigation. I know him through Alex. But that's not the interesting part, as I'm sure you're starting to realize."

"Alex works on the Governor's reelection campaign," Erik remembered. "So this Quested has something to do with Shaw?"

"Your favorite person," Darwin quipped. "And Janos just isn't connected to Shaw -- he's his personal assistant. Total right-hand guy. Everything Alex does has to go through him."

Erik felt his pulse speed up a little as the adrenaline hit his system. "Someone in the Governor's office might have the clout to make our evidence disappear," Erik said. "Or lean on Frost for some breathing room."

"That's what I was thinking, too, but it's not like we have any evidence," Darwin said.

Erik thought for a moment. "Do you think Alex would mind a surprise visit?"

"From me?" Darwin laughed. "Definitely not. From you? A different story."

"He's never even met me," Erik pointed out.

"There's a reason for that."

"Call your boyfriend and let him know we're coming by in a little while," Erik said, his tone clear it was an order and not a request. "Call me back and let me know when."

"Hey, wait a minute," Darwin said. "There's still that other stuff."

"Other stuff?" Erik asked, half-distracted as he tried to figure out Charles's ridiculously complicated coffee maker.

"The address you gave me yesterday before the Meridian building?"

Erik's stilled, almost holding his breath as he waited for the answer. "Well?"

"That address you gave me belongs to a Brian Xavier," Darwin said. "He bought it almost ten years ago, no tenants or anything that I could find."

Erik thought about the photo in the living room of Charles with Brian Xavier and Charles's vague discussions about his "freelance" status, the way he seemed to have the time, money and connections to help Erik track down a murderer with no worries about what it was doing to his business. Erik wasn't very familiar with high-end escorts but he knew some of them did it for that rush alone, for the chance to find themselves in the company of rich and powerful men.

They didn't come much more rich and powerful than Brian Xavier.

"You still there?" Darwin's voice was tentative but it snapped Erik out of his reverie.

"Yeah, sorry," Erik said. "I'm hanging up now, call Alex, then call me back."

"Sure, sure," Darwin grumbled as he disconnected the call.

Erik tried not to think about unpleasant things like why Charles was living in a house owned by the prestigious editor of the _Times_ and instead focused on his coffee, the new details of the case he'd learned from Darwin and what he wanted to steal from Charles's cabinets for breakfast. He'd just settled on scrambled eggs and toast when Charles shuffled downstairs in his robe, still yawning.

"I thought perhaps you'd gone," Charles said, coming around to fill his tea kettle with water.

Erik paused where he was pushing the still-runny eggs around in the pan. "Tired of me already?"

"Of course not," Charles protested, the firmness of his declaration at odds with his unruly hair and sheet-creased cheek. "I...like having you around, if it hasn't been obvious."

Erik didn't want to admit it but he felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. "It's not the Ritz," he deadpanned. "But it'll do."

Charles smiled.

By the time they finished breakfast, Darwin had called with Alex's response, which had been confused agreement to his request.

"I didn't tell him why," Darwin said. "Don't make me regret this."

Erik had filled Charles in on Janos Quested and his connection to the Meridian building, but he hadn't told him much about where they were going, just that they had an interview lined up and he was welcome to come along. There really was no reason to let him come, Erik knew, but somewhere along the way, the investigation had become _theirs_ and not just his. Erik didn't see a point in cutting Charles out now.

When they pulled up, Erik could see Darwin waiting for them in front of campaign headquarters and that Charles was frowning out of the window at the office they'd come to visit. "This is the Governor's campaign headquarters, yes?"

"How did you know that?" Erik asked.

Charles shrugged. "You'd be surprised."

As they stepped out of the car, Darwin walked over to join them, throwing significant looks between Charles and Erik like his eyebrows could demand an explanation. It was Erik's turn to shrug as he introduced them. "Darwin, this is...Charles," he said. "Charles, this is my partner, Detective Muñoz."

"A pleasure," Charles said, offering his hand to Darwin. Erik watched Darwin take it, still shooting looks at Erik. "Come on," he told them. "Alex is waiting."

Erik hadn't spent much time inside a campaign headquarters, but the hubbub that greeted them on their way to Alex reflected what he'd expected -- ringing phones, posters everywhere, flustered office workers dashing to and fro. Darwin weaved through them with little problem or interference from the employees, while Erik and Charles trailed behind him, letting him lead the way.

Since Erik had never met or seen Darwin's mysterious Alex in the year he'd known of his existence, he had no idea who they were looking for in the busy office, and he didn't know they'd reached their destination until he saw Darwin stop to speak with a young blond in a finely tailored dark suit. His estimation of Alex rose when it was obvious that he wasn't trying to hide exactly who Darwin was to him, if their affectionate greeting was any indication.

"So this is your partner, huh?" Alex said as he approached, nodding in Erik's direction. Then his eyes slid to Charles. "And this is definitely a surprise."

Charles smiled. "Hello again, Alex. How have you been?"

"Busy," Alex said with a laugh, seemingly oblivious to both Darwin and Erik's looks of disbelief. "What are you doing with these two?"

"I'm helping with their investigation," Charles said smoothly, only a hint of mischief in his reply.

Alex's eyebrows rose at that, matching the expression on his boyfriend's face. "How did you swing that?"

Charles shot a look at Erik. "Maybe one day I'll tell you," he told Alex.

"You know him?" Darwin asked, tugging a little on Alex's arm.

"Yeah?" Alex answered. "Apparently so do you."

" _How?_ "

Alex shot Charles a confused look before meeting Darwin's eyes again. "Work?"

"You don't sound very sure," Darwin pointed out dryly, and Erik was wondering just what kind of personal drama he'd accidentally created with his decision to bring Charles along. Of course, it wasn't like he could've known that Darwin's slick politico boyfriend would know who Charles was, much to Darwin's obvious jealousy.

"Speaking of work, I'm sure Alex has some that we're keeping him from," Charles broke in, earning a grateful smile from Alex and a terse scowl from Darwin. To Erik, Charles said, "How about you ask him your questions so we can all move along?"

Erik decided it was probably a good idea for all involved. "Any idea why Janos Quested would have rented office space in a building called the Meridian?"

"No," Alex said immediately. "I mean, I guess he could have personal reasons that aren't related to the Governor, but I'm not sure when he'd have the time. He handles everything for Governor Shaw."

"How about Shaw?" Erik asked. "Any reason he'd have to have some separate office space that's not connected with his campaign or the governorship?"

"Again, not that I'm aware of, but it's not like he tells me everything." Darwin received the brunt of Alex's frown, which mirrored the still-sour expression on Darwin's face. "Just what is actually going on here?"

"We can't really discuss it," Erik said. "It's part of an ongoing investigation."

The look Alex was giving both Erik and Darwin was withering enough to peel the paint from the walls. The only person who wasn't being treated to it was Charles, and Erik was too busy trying not to think how _Charles_ and Shaw's _election campaign_ intersected for him to be so friendly with Alex.

When it was obvious he wasn't going to get a better answer, Alex narrowed his eyes. "I don't have time for this," Alex said. "Detective Lehnsherr, I wish I could say it's been nice to meet you. Charles? Good to see you again." He shot Darwin a final glare before he stalked off. "I'll see you later."

Darwin sighed as he watched him walk away. "That went well."

Charles shrugged. "I don't think Alex is really the person who would know."

"Think we should just ask Quested?" Darwin asked.

"Or Shaw," Erik suggested. "Why bother with the middle man?"

Darwin looked even more apprehensive at that than he had after Alex's unfriendly farewell. "You know that's not a good idea."

Erik did know, but that didn't mean he didn't want to. Of all the names that had come up in the investigation, Shaw was the only one who had come close to having the connections to sabotage the case the way it had been, and Erik was tired of being one step behind whoever it was. The fact that was Shaw one of his least favorite people only added another dimension to his determination. "If he's involved ---"

"And if he's not, it'll be your badge," Darwin cut in. "Frost has already told you to back off and we have _no evidence_. We can barely tie Quested to Smith, let alone Shaw."

Erik wasn't happy about it but he knew Darwin had a point. "Any other suggestions?"

Charles had been standing to the side, arms crossed as he listened to the detectives' discussion. When it was obvious that Darwin had no answer, he spoke up. "I'll do it."

"You'll do what?"

"I'll talk to Janos or Shaw. Whoever," Charles said.

"You're just going to walk up and interrogate the governor?" Erik asked.

Charles rolled his eyes. "No, I'm going to walk up, smile and say hello. We'll see where it goes from there."

"I think he's asking how you're going to even get that far," Darwin said.

Charles looked close to rolling his eyes again. "The governor and I are -- well, let's call it friendly. We've had dealings in the past."

The faint look of disbelief that had appeared on Darwin's face earlier was back with full force. " _Friendly_?"

 _Like you are with Brian Xavier?_ , Erik wanted to ask but he stopped himself, if only because he was still having trouble dealing with the idea that Charles had any relationship to Shaw, let alone one that could be termed friendly. It was obviously a euphemism and the implication made something hot and sharp rise up in his throat. He looked at Charles, all solemn blue eyes and overlong hair, and tried to push away all the unpleasant thoughts that had been circling his brain for the last twelve or so hours, starting with their conversation from the stakeout and ending with the last, added insult of _Sebastian Shaw_.

He failed.

"Fine." Erik said, turning away, putting his back to the room and to Charles. "Darwin? Let's go."

"Erik?" Charles asked. "What are...?"

"I'm going back in to the precinct," he said.

"I thought you'd taken the day off," Charles said. Erik could hear the confusion in his voice that he'd probably see in Charles's face if he turned around.

"Change of plans."

"All right." Charles's voice was soft, perhaps even hurt.

Before he wasted all of the effort by turning around and making a scene, Erik headed out, Darwin on his heels, refusing to think about Charles as he left him behind.

**

Charles watched as Erik and Detective Muñoz disappeared out of the office and tried to ignore the speculative looks he was getting from the interns who were loitering around. He frowned, arms still crossed, staring after them for who knew how long before he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"You all right?" Alex asked when Charles startled out of his contemplation.

"Oh, you know," he said with a wave of his hand, not quite up to repeating a lie like "I'm fine." It was obvious that something had soured Erik's mood considerably and Charles had the nagging feeling it wasn't something connected to the case.

Alex also seemed troubled, jaw clenched tight. "Did those assholes just leave you here?"

"Indeed they did," Charles admitted with a hollow laugh. Transportation was the least of his concerns. "It's not a problem, I can catch a cab."

"I don't know what was up with Darwin," Alex told him. "He's usually not so...I don't know, jealous? That's not him at all. I don't know what his problem was today."

Charles's smile was wry. "I do," he told him. "Just tell Darwin exactly how you met me and it'll clear the misunderstanding right up."

"By telling him about a new media and journalism summit?" Alex asked.

Charles nodded.

"You sure you don't want me to give you a ride out of here?" Alex asked him. "It's not a problem."

"I could use a favor," Charles told him. "But not that. Where's the governor right now?"

Alex glanced at the clock on the far wall. "Actually, I've got him doing a softball Q&A with one of the _Times_ reporters. A woman, something Scottish?"

"Moira MacTaggart?" Charles supplied.

Alex nodded. "Yeah, her. It should be over in less than an hour though. Why?"

"I want to talk to the Governor," he admitted. "Now seems like a good time to clear up a few things."

"Charles," Alex groaned, shaking his head. "Do I even want to know?"

"It will be horrible for your blood pressure," Charles admitted. "But it could turn out to be nothing. Don't start worrying quite yet."

Alex eyed him for a moment before speaking. "Maybe I should take back that 'good to see you,' Charles."

A genuine laugh escaped Charles at that. "I am sorry, Alex," he said with a smile. "Hopefully you won't have to."

But Alex was smart enough to be worried by the appearance of two detectives and an investigative reporter asking about his candidate, and the anxiety was apparent on his face even as he bid Charles a friendly goodbye. Charles almost wished he'd taken him up on the offer of a ride when he found himself hustling into the newspaper's building right around the deadline for Shaw's interview to be over, but he had decided he'd done enough damage to Alex's relationships for one day and hadn't wanted him any more involved than he was already was.

Luck was with him because Charles saw Shaw with his dark-haired, suavely-dressed assistant near the elevators just as he bounded up the stairs, still exchanging parting pleasantries with Moira who Charles could tell felt like she'd far more Sebastian Shaw in her day for the moment, which meant Charles's interruption wouldn't be as unwelcome as he'd feared.

He pasted a smile on his face and headed over. "Governor," he said in greeting. "Fancy meeting you here."

Sebastian Shaw, immaculate in his suit, returned Charles's greeting with a megawatt politician's smile of his own. "Well, well, Charles Xavier," he said. "It's been a while. How have you been?"

"I've been good, Governor," he said, shaking hands with him. "And yourself?"

"Can't complain," Shaw said. "Although I'll be glad when this campaign nonsense is over." He glanced at Moira, still wielding that smile. She, on the other hand, was giving Charles a strange look, trying to express something through various facial tics that he couldn't quite decipher. "I'd like to get back to focusing on the work instead of politicking."

Charles didn't let his smile waver. "Well at least you've had the chance to spend some time with our lovely Moira here."

Moira was now openly glaring at him but Charles ignored it as Shaw laughed. "She's been very...thorough," he said. "But I wouldn't expect anything less from your paper."

"Not mine, my father's," Charles corrected him. "I just dip my toe in now and then when I find a good enough story." Charles made sure to imbue his voice with just enough innuendo on the topic to hopefully elicit a question from Shaw.

He wasn't disappointed. "No wonder I haven't seen you around," Shaw said, still affable and genial. "This election has shaped up to rather a rather tedious affair, especially for a young man like you."

"Actually I'm working on something, but yes, it's not related to the election," Charles told him. "Maybe you've seen some of it. About the body they found in the Bronx last week? The one they think might be a prostitute?"

Charles hoped he wasn't imagining the flicker he thought he saw in Shaw's eyes where they held Charles's steady gaze. "That does sound more your speed."

"Well I'm pretty sure there's more than meets the eye to the case," he said. "Nothing like a good mystery to unravel."

Janos shifted restlessly where he stood at Shaw's side. "Governor," he murmured, clearing his throat. "You're going to be late for your next appointment if we do not leave now."

"Oh, yes, of course," Shaw said, then favored Charles with another smile. "It was a pleasure to see you again, Charles."

Charles returned it. "Same here, Governor. Good luck with the election."

"I know I can count on _your_ vote," he said before turning to Moira. "Thank you for such an invigorating interview, Ms. McTaggart." With that, he swept off toward the elevators, Janos at his side whispering furiously as he pulled out his Blackberry.

As soon as the elevators doors slid closed behind them, Moira rounded on Charles. "What the hell was that, Charles? Really?"

Charles dropped the pleasant pretence he'd put on for Shaw. "Things have been progressing this morning, Moira, with the story," he told her, gently guiding her toward her desk, fingers around her elbow. "I really need to borrow your brain for a bit."

"I have a deadline," she reminded him. "I just finished with Shaw!"

"I noticed," he said. "But I think he might be involved, Moira. That's what the point was with that little display."

"I knew it had to be something," she said as they reached her desk and she pulled her arm from his hold. "But I was more worried about your father killing us both."

"Always a possibility for me," Charles admitted. "But you'll be fine, love. You're like the daughter he never had."

"He has Raven."

"You're like the daughter he had and actually likes then," Charles told her. "Either way, you're safe."

She crossed her arms. "So are you going to tell me about these developments or not?"

"Gladly," he began, then launched into an abbreviated version of what he'd found out. He didn't give her much detail on the how, but he told her about the key card for the Meridian, and then the stakeout that hadn't revealed much, followed by explaining the connection Darwin had found between one of the offices and Janos Quested. Somewhere in the middle, Sean wandered over with a stack of papers and a cup of coffee which he shamelessly held out for Moira, who took it with nothing more than a distracted murmur of thanks as she listened to Charles.

By the time he'd finished explaining the events of the morning that led to his ambush of Shaw, Moira had finished the coffee. "I think you're right that there's something there," she stated. "But it's really tenuous, even for us."

"I know, but I _feel_ that we're on the right track finally," he said. "First the Tabram case, then the escort thing, it's all just been distracting us from what's really going on but I think we're there now."

"We still need a solid connection or else we're fumbling around in the dark, I don't care how sure your hunch is."

"Wait a minute," Sean said. "Are you guys looking for a way to connect Shaw to Elliot Smith?"

"That's exactly what we're talking about," Moira told him. "Why, did you find something when you were digging into Smith?"

"No," he answered, fumbling with the papers he had in his hand. "But I did find something when I was looking into Shaw."

"Why were you looking into Shaw in the first place?" Charles wanted to know as he watched Sean spread his papers across Moira's desk and start thumbing through his files.

"I was doing background for Moira," he explained. "But then I noticed something strange and I got distracted, so I followed it for awhile."

"And it led to Elliot Smith?" Moira asked.

"Not quite but close." With a triumphant wave, he brandished a small stack of papers he'd stapled together. "Okay, so you had me looking into his campaign finances, right?"

"Right," Moira nodded, then said "What?" when she noticed the look Charles was giving her.

"Alex Summers said it was a softball Q&A," he told her.

Moira snorted. "Alex Summers is a remarkably naive _dear_ to be working in politics."

" _Anyway_ ," Sean continued. "I noticed that there's this one PAC, right, that's killing for him. I mean, they are throwing money out left and right, and it's why his campaign numbers were pretty low, because they're so generous, which was why I decided to look into the PAC. Most of _its_ money is coming from a local real estate company but that company is actually just a subsidiary of another corporation."

"This is starting to sound interesting," Moira said, eyes lighting up. "What else?"

Sean was positively glowing under her attention. "So, the real estate firm is actually part of a holdings company out of Nevada, SGS Holdings." He paused, obviously for effect, and grinned. "And guess what it counts among its holdings?"

"What?" Charles asked.

"THFC, Inc.," Sean announced.

"The HellFire Club," Charles realized.

Sean's grin got even wider. "Yup."

Charles caught Moira's eye as it began to sink in for both of them. "That can't just be a coincidence."

"That Shaw's campaign is being backed by money that may or may not be coming from an escort service..." Moira continued.

"And then one of its escorts is murdered and the evidence for the crime goes missing from the police station," Charles finished.

"I did good, right?" Sean said.

Charles grinned at him. "Better than good, Sean. You might've caught that murderer after all!"

"Maybe it's time to fill your dad in," Moira told him. "This is getting into that territory."

Charles agreed with Moira's assessment but he was actually more worried about someone else. "I need to go," he told them. "I've got to tell Erik."

"Go?" Moira echoed as Sean asked, "Who's Erik?"

"Yes," he said to Moira, then to Sean, "He's my...well, he's been helping me on this case. But he could be in serious hot water if this is going where we think it is."

"So call him and let him know, then we'll go talk to Brian," Moira told him.

Charles shook his head. "I need to tell him in person." Given their chilly separation at Shaw's campaign headquarters, Charles wasn't even sure if Erik would take his call if he tried, and...the truth was Charles wanted to check on him himself. "It won't take long, an hour and a half, tops. Then I'll be back and we can break the news to Dad."

Moira sighed. "Fine, I can work on this other stuff until then, I guess."

"You're a doll," he told her with a quick squeeze of her hand. "I swear, it won't take long at all. I'll be back before 4 o'clock."

"I'll time you," she warned, and he acknowledged it with a wave, already half-way through the bullpen toward the elevators.

Charles knew where Erik's precinct was because of his long connection with Hank, but he hadn't made much of a habit of roaming around inside of it, looking for its detectives. It took him longer than he would've liked before he saw a tall, familiar form that was almost as good as finding Erik himself.

"Detective Muñoz," Charles called out. "Darwin!"

"Charles?" Darwin turned, still looking a bit cool toward him. He would've apologized and tried to clear up the matter if he hadn't had more pressing concerns. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm looking for Erik," he said. "It's vitally important I speak to him."

Darwin grimaced. "Good luck with that. Frost kicked him out when he showed up and I think he's turned his phone off."

Charles frowned. "Why?"

Darwin shrugged. "I don't understand the moods, I just weather them."

Charles lowered his voice. "I think I figured it out," he explained. "Who killed Smith and why, and how it's related to Sebastian Shaw."

Darwin's eyes widened and he leaned in a little. "Seriously?"

He nodded. "I want you to tell him to call me as soon as you get a hold of him, all right? I want to fill him on everything."

"I'll keep trying," Darwin promised. "It's just...Shaw's not his favorite person."

"So I've become aware," Charles said dryly. "I mean it, though. I've got it all figured out more or less. I think. Just have him call me and tell him to be careful, yes?"

"I will," Darwin promised. Then he added, "You could just wait around for him here."

Charles shook his head. It was tempting but he did have his own job to do. "I have an appointment," he explained. "But I'll be waiting for his call."

Darwin waved him off and Charles made a dash for the exit. He'd already spent a fortune in cab fare for the day, but he didn't want to waste a moment, so he headed down the street, keeping his eyes peeled for an empty taxi. He knew that once he and Moira finished letting his dad know about what they'd found that Brian Xavier would be ready to jump on the story, to attack it with everything they had until they figured out where it was going. Charles hoped he'd have a chance to speak to Erik before he was swept up in that whirlwind; he wanted to explain himself before someone else -- Darwin, most likely, once he'd spoken to Alex -- revealed his deception.

Tucking the lapels of his coat closer around his face, he was just about to step out toward a cab he saw someone exiting when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

He'd barely even turned around, just enough to get an impression of a severe, vaguely familiar face, before there was a pain in the back of his head and everything went black.

 _End of Part 10_


	11. Chapter 11

Erik had expected Emma's reception to his unexpected visit to work even as he'd decided to return with Darwin after their meeting with Alex, but he had had to get away from Charles before he said or did something he knew he'd regret. Everything Erik felt about Charles at the moment was a jumbled mess that he needed to unravel, but he didn't have the energy; he certainly didn't have the time, not when he was getting close to a real lead on the Smith case.

After Emma had booted him, Erik had taken the hint and cleared out, although he'd been a little lost for a destination. He had eventually ended up at the firing range, unloading clip after clip into paper targets. It was his favorite stress buster, and Erik let himself get lost in the hypnotic rhythm of shoot-eject-reload, so much so he was surprised when he realized he'd wasted a couple of hours on it.

On his way out was when he realized he'd left his cell phone at his desk which meant another stop at the precinct was unavoidable, no matter what Emma would say when she saw him.

He'd barely cleared the bullpen when Darwin rushed at him, agitated like his partner never was. "Why aren't you answering your phone?" Darwin wanted to know.

Erik ducked around him and yanked at one of his desk drawers, pulling out the phone. "I didn't have it," he explained, flipping the phone open to reveal a half-dozen missed calls from Darwin. "What did you want?"

"Not me," Darwin said, as he slipped into his chair. "Charles. He came by."

"He came _here_?" Erik asked. When Darwin nodded, he added, "I don't have any missed calls from him."

Darwin shrugged. "He said he wanted to tell you in person. He thinks he's figured out that connection we were looking for."

"Did he say what it was?" Erik wanted to know, already thumbing through his contacts to highlight Charles's number. He listened to it ring while he waited for Darwin's answer, but his partner just shook his head. "He said he wanted to tell you himself and that it was _vitally important_ you call him ASAP."

In his ear, Erik heard the beginning of Charles's voice mail message, _This is Charles. I cannot answer my phone at the moment...._ and he flipped the phone shut with more force than the action warranted. "He's not answering."

"He did say he had an appointment," Darwin told him, a little hesitant like he was waiting for a bomb to go off. Obviously, it hadn't escaped Darwin's attention what had set him off back at Shaw's campaign headquarters.

"I guess he'll call back when he can," Erik said, sighing as he sank down into his desk chair.

"Should you even be here?" Darwin asked. "Won't Frost come and throw your ass out of here _again_ if she sees you?"

"I'm just going to check my email," he told his partner as he started the boot-up process on his computer, which they both knew meant that he was staying until Frost showed up to throw him out again. Instead of arguing, Darwin just sighed and went back to his paperwork.

The emails had piled up in the few days since he'd checked them thoroughly, so Erik was preoccupied enough that he didn't think about Charles every minute -- maybe every other or every third moment. It had been a long time since he'd found his personal problems distracting him from the job but it probably didn't help that said personal problem was wrapped up in his case.

When his cell phone finally rang almost an hour later, both Erik and Darwin jumped. Erik grabbed for it and didn't even bother to check the CallerID before he put it up to ear. "Hello?"

He'd been expecting -- or at least hoping -- that the call was from Charles; it wasn't, but the voice on the other line was British, sharp and commanding. "Is this Detective Erik Lehnsherr?" the voice asked.

"Yes," he said, frowning. "Who is this?"

"I'm looking for Charles," the voice said. "I'm..."

"...Brian Xavier," Erik realized with shock.

"Yes. Have you seen Charles lately? Been in contact with him?" Xavier asked.

"No," Erik managed. "Not since this morning."

"He left here several hours ago," Xavier told him. "He said he was coming to see you. He didn't make it?"

"What are all these questions for?" Erik asked instead of answering.

He heard what sounded like Xavier muffling the receiver and then muted voices in the background before Xavier spoke again. "Charles is missing, Detective Lehnsherr," Xavier informed him. "I'm trying to figure out what happened to him."

"He's not missing," Erik said. "He did stop by here a few hours ago but I wasn't here. He left and said he had an appointment." Darwin nodded across from him as if to affirm his recounting of events.

" _I_ was that appointment and he didn't ever make it," Xavier stated, and Erik could feel a twist of unease in his stomach as he started to realize how convinced Brian Xavier was that something was wrong. "Charles is a lot of things, Detective, many of them not flattering, but he'd never ignore my calls after he didn't show up like he was supposed to."

"But what could've happened?" Erik asked. "I mean..."

Xavier's voice had been firm but calm for most of the conversation, but when he interrupted Erik, his voice was swelling with anger and rising in volume. "Where are you, Lehnsherr?"

"The precinct," he answered before he thought about it. "But what --"

"You work with Dr. Hank McCoy, don't you? Yes, you do," Xavier asked and answered himself. His voice shook with anger and maybe even a little fear, something Erik could relate to. "I'm on my way and you better hope, Lehnsherr, that we figure this out before something has happened to him or I swear to god, I'll kill you. This is your fault, anyway."

Erik didn't have time to reply because Xavier disconnected the phone with a ringing bang.

"What's up?" Darwin asked, noticing the look on Erik's face.

"That was Brian Xavier," he said, slowly lowering his cell to his desk. "He thinks something happened to Charles. He's on his way."

"Xavier?" Darwin echoed. "Wow. Do you think it's possible that something...?"

"He said he figured out our connection," Erik said, that first twist of unease growing by the second. "Maybe someone figured out that he knew and..." He swallowed thickly.

"It's only been a few hours," Darwin said, meant to console. "How would they know?"

"This is not happening," Erik decided as he shoved away from his desk. With determination in every step, he headed toward Emma's office.

Darwin caught his arm. "What are you doing?"

"Whoever killed Smith probably did it to cover their tracks," Erik reminded him. "I don't want to risk the same thing happening to Charles."

His partner frowned. "If you're sure."

"I am." He nodded toward the bullpen. "Keep your eye out for a very angry newspaper editor."

Frost was surprised first by the door being wrenched open and then by the sight of Erik as the perpetrator. "Lehnsherr, I already sent you home to cool off," she said as he kicked it shut behind him.

"What the hell is going on with the Smith case, Emma?" he demanded. "And now is not the time for games. Our evidence has disappeared, you all but ordered me off the case and now someone's gone missing in connection with this investigation. _I want answers_ and I want them now."

Emma blinked in the face of his ire, looking more ruffled than he'd seen her in a long time. "What evidence? Who's missing?"

"Don't act like you don't know," he snarled. "The same day you told me to back off, I find out all of our evidence from Smith's apartment has gone missing. And now so has Charles, just when he came by to tell me he figured it out!"

"You never mentioned any evidence, Erik," Emma said, rising to her feet. "This is serious, I never..."

"I wasn't sure if I could trust you," he told her bluntly. "I'm still not. But I can't waste time with trying to figure you out if Charles is really in danger."

Emma raised a hand to her head. "There's a lot I need to unravel here since you've been keeping me out of the loop over your paranoid delusions." She removed her hand, eyes hard. "Who's Charles?"

"He's a contact I've made on this case," he said. "He came by today and told Darwin he had new information. Now, he's gone missing and his...friends are convinced it's foul play. I can't say I blame them." Erik glared at her. "And I'm not paranoid, Emma. We've known each other long enough that I know when you're feeding me a line of bullshit and that's exactly what you did over the Smith case. Someone _told_ you to pull me back on it."

"Yes! I mean, no, I..."

Erik leaned over her desk, until they were almost nose-to-nose. "It was Shaw, wasn't it?" he asked. "Wasn't it?"

Emma stepped back, taking a shuddering breath. "He's a friend. You know that. He just..."

"...wanted you to help him cover up a murder?" Erik shook his head. "Goddammit, Emma!"

"It wasn't like that, Lehnsherr!" she snapped. "It's almost election time and he admitted that looking too deeply into the client records for that escort service might embarrass him. That's all it was."

"Except my evidence went missing," Erik reminded her. "Except Elliot Smith is dead and Charles is missing!"

Emma looked stricken by Erik's hard words but he wasn't in the mood to care about her or her feelings. Even if she hadn't been anything more than an unfortunate pawn in Shaw's schemes, she should've known better. What little sympathy he might've had for her disappeared when he thought about how her actions might've endangered Charles.

"We'll figure this out, Erik," she told him. "We'll find your contact and we'll find who killed Smith." Her eyes darkened. "Even if I don't like where we find them."

He accepted her veiled apology with a quick nod. "I was starting to work on the connection between Smith and Shaw when this all happened," he told her. "This is not about my problem with him, Frost. This is _real_. He's mixed up in all this somehow."

"Let's focus on finding out what happened to your contact and worry about bringing Shaw down later," she told him. "What do we know about it? How long has he been missing?"

"Just a few hours, apparently," Erik said. "But he missed an...appointment that was uncharacteristic enough that someone got worried."

Emma opened her mouth to reply, but Erik saw her eyes had wandered out over the bullpen, distracted by something. Then they widened and she sucked in another surprised breath. "Is there a reason that Brian _fucking_ Xavier is here, Erik?"

Erik turned to follow Emma's line of sight and, yes, there was Brian Xavier, looking positively murderous as he swept between the desks. Although he couldn't hear from within Emma's office, it was obvious that Xavier demanding answers from everyone he passed, quite possibly shouting if the visible quake in one of the younger detectives was any indication. When Erik glanced back to Emma, she was still waiting for an answer.

He shrugged. "He's the one who called about Charles."

If possible, Emma looked more concerned. "Charles? _Xavier_? Oh god." Erik didn't quite understand what she meant, but he didn't have a lot of time to think about it as she all but dragged him along as she hurried out of her office to greet the imperious presence waiting for them.

Somehow Xavier had zeroed in on his desk despite the fact that it was empty, and he stood there waiting, glowering at Darwin. Erik immediately noticed that Xavier wasn't alone -- there was a thin, sharp-eyed brunette and a young red-headed man crowding in behind him. McCoy was there, too, for some reason Erik couldn't fathom, visibly nervous where he stood hunched over behind Darwin.

"Mr. Xavier," Emma said as she reached him, still dragging Erik along. "Can I ask what you're doing here?"

Xavier's eyes flicked to Erik before they settled on Emma. "I'm sure your detective has filled you in, since it's his bloody fault."

"Brian!" the woman exclaimed, a chastisement that Xavier ignored.

Emma nodded. "He said you think something's happened to Charles?"

"He said he had to talk to _him_ ," Xavier said, with another icy glance at Erik, "And that he'd be right back, but he never turned up. That's been hours ago, so Moira here got concerned. When I couldn't reach him on his mobile, I became concerned as well. I _continue_ to be concerned."

"If it's only been a few hours," Emma began, but Xavier cut her off.

"He wouldn't do this unless something was wrong," he repeated, his voice almost soft compared to his earlier sharpness. "He's been hot on this murder story for a week and now he goes missing when he makes a breakthrough? Not a coincidence, by any meaning of the term."

Emma frowned. "What can we do for you?"

Brian scowled and the expression was vaguely familiar to Erik, although he couldn't place why. "What do you think?" he thundered. "I want you to find my son and I want him found now!"

There was so much going on in Erik's head, it was amazing he managed to focus enough to come with his short, incredulous reply.

"Your _son_?"

**

Erik had never counted himself as a particularly self-reflective person, although he'd never been uncomfortable with himself, either. But at that moment, he'd never wanted more to be someone who wasn't Erik Lehnsherr, someone who wasn't being gnawed apart from the inside out with worry and guilt over the idea that Charles might be in danger, only to now have to deal with another shock.

"Did you say _your son_?" Erik asked.

Xavier turned his scowl from Emma to Erik. "Yes, my son. That bloody pain in the arse who decided he had to find out who was murdering hookers in the Bronx and who's apparently got himself snatched for the trouble!"

"And your son's a...?"

"Aren't you his source?" the woman -- Moira -- asked, stepping forward. "Why are you acting like you don't know who he is?"

"Wait, _source_?" Erik repeated and McCoy flinched. His gaze swung from Moira to Xavier to Emma and back again. "So he's what? _A reporter_?"

"Freelance investigative journalist," Xavier said with enough of a sneer that Erik figured it was the echo to an old argument. "And not a very good one, though I..." Xavier trailed off, laser-beam focus on Erik once again. "What did you think he was if you didn't know he was a reporter?"

"I..." Erik couldn't stop the truth from tumbling from his mouth. "I thought he was an...escort."

The red-head couldn't quite smother his bark of laughter, while Moira gaped at him. Xavier's gaze didn't waver as he sighed and said, "I wish I could say this was the first time I've heard that about him." He shook his head. "But I can't."

If he'd had the time, Erik might've felt relieved or betrayed by the apparent news that Charles wasn't an escort although he had let Erik believe he was, but he knew there was more important things to worry about, like the fact that he was missing. It wouldn't matter how Erik decided he felt about any of it if they didn't get Charles back safely. "I guess all that matters now is that he's missing," he said. To Emma, he said, "We need to find him."

"I agree," she returned, straightening a little. She looked around at the gathered group before pointing toward a conference room. "I think we should take this somewhere more private until we figure out what's going on and what we're going to do about it."

They filed over to the room -- Xavier, Moira, the red-head, Darwin, and McCoy. Erik sent him a look and finally asked the question, stopping the medical examiner from stepping inside the conference room with a hand on his arm. "What are you even doing up here?"

"Brian called me," he said. "When he couldn't find Charles. He thought I might know something..."

If possible, Erik was even more confused. "You know Charles?"

McCoy nodded, still visibly apprehensive. "I used to date his sister."

"Raven?" Erik asked. It surprised him, to think of Charles's pretty, fast-driving sister having anything to do with awkward, fumbling Hank McCoy, no matter how brilliant their M.E. was.

McCoy ducked his head and, with an "Yeah, Raven," slipped away from Erik and into the conference room where he gravitated toward the red-head whose name Erik still didn't know. Emma paused at his side. "I feel like I'm missing something about this whole thing," she admitted.

"You're not the only one."

She almost smiled at that. "Inside, Lehnsherr. We need to get this figured out."

Once they were all settled, it was obvious that Xavier thought he'd been the one steering the renewed conversation, but Erik refused to let that happen. Instead, he turned to Moira. "How about you tell us why you're sure something has happened to Charles?"

"He's been working the story -- you know, Elliot Smith?" Moira began. When Erik nodded, she continued. "Well, he shows up this morning just as I'm finishing up an interview with Shaw and starts chatting with him about the Smith case. Then, we compare notes and we find a connection between Shaw and The Hellfire Club, so he leaves to find "Erik," which is you?"

Erik nodded.

"He thought you might be in trouble or danger or something so he rushed off," Moira said, faintly accusatory. "But we had plans to take what we had to Brian and move on it, so when he didn't come back, I knew something was wrong."

"He did make it here," Darwin said.

"I just wasn't here," Erik added, glaring at Emma so she knew he blamed her for that. "But he spoke to Darwin."

"So whatever happened to him happened after he left here but before he reached the paper," the redhead said. "That narrows it down, doesn't it?"

"Charles would've taken a cab," McCoy pointed out and Erik wondered how he even knew. "So it must've happened to him -- well, _here_."

Erik turned back to Moira. "What did he want to tell me?"

"Sean --" she pointed to the red-head, "-- found out that one of the PACs supporting Shaw's reelection is getting its money from The Hellfire Club through a dummy company called SGS Holdings."

"SGS?" Emma's question surprised everyone. Both Moira and Sean nodded, and Emma shared a grim look with Erik. "I think I've seen shareholders' reports for them at Sebastian's before."

In background Sean's eyebrows rose as he mouthed "Sebastian" but Erik was too busy grinding his teeth to take much notice. "Shaw's in this up to his neck."

"It was bad enough when we could just trace his support to Hellfire," Moira said. "But if he's actually one of its owners..."

"There's no way he could argue that he wasn't influencing the PAC," Emma finished. She folded her arms as she glanced at Erik. "Maybe Smith found out and they had to silence him."

"And it explains why all the evidence is gone," Darwin added. "Trying to cover any records he might've made of it."

"While it's all very interesting to discuss how _my_ reporters did all the work for you on your case," Xavier broke in. "I think the more pressing issue is what Shaw may have done with Charles and how we're going to find him."

"Mr. Xavier's right," Emma said, although her chilly frown made it clear she was only agreeing with the second half of his statement. "We need to focus on finding Charles. Detective Muñoz, grab another detective off the floor and start asking around the building. See if anyone remembers seeing Charles leave, maybe noticed something."

"On it, Captain," he said, rising from his chair. He gave Erik a slap on the back as he passed on his way out into the bullpen.

"There's the Meridian building," Erik offered. "Shaw's assistant had some space rented there, it's what got us on his trail in the first place. They might have stashed him there." He straightened from where he'd been leaning against the wall. "I can --"

"No," Emma said, cutting him off as she pulled her phone from her slacks pocket. "I need you here until we have something definitive. Just give me the address." Emma's quiet conversation had a pair of uniforms dispatched to check out the space rented in Quested's name in the Meridian building, while the rest of them remained huddled together in the conference room, trying to think of other angles to explore.

Erik felt like a wild animal who'd been boxed in a cage when all he wanted to do was run free -- in this case, get out of the station and do something constructive to help find Charles. Trapped as he was, he paced the length of the conference room, ignoring both Xavier's questioning looks and the way McCoy cowered whenever he got too near. Listening to the reporters and Emma throw ideas around didn't feel nearly proactive enough, not when it was Charles's life that was on the line and every minute that passed made him more and more worried that they wouldn't find him alive.

When Emma's phone rang, she excused herself to take the call back in her office, leaving Erik at the mercy of the three reporters. Xavier didn't waste any time, either. "I have to ask," he said. "What exactly did my son do to convince you that he was an escort?"

Erik glared, but he stopped pacing. "It was less something he did and more a misunderstanding."

Xavier raised his eyebrows but he didn't say anything more.

Erik turned his irritation, which had no real outlet, onto Emma as she stepped back into the room. "Well?" he demanded. "Anything?"

"There wasn't a sign of them at the Meridian," she said. "On the other hand, I've spoken to the Chief and with the Mayor's office and they're prepared to back us on this if we end up having to move against Se--Shaw to retrieve Charles."

"I feel imminently relieved knowing that," Xavier drawled, his sarcasm unmasked. "Now if only you had fucking idea where my son could be."

Before Emma could let loose with the scathing reply Erik knew was on the tip of her tongue, Darwin burst back into the conference, looking wild-eyed and alarmed. When his eyes met Erik's, he grew even more distressed.

"What?" Erik asked. "Darwin?"

Darwin let his troubled eyes scan across the room. "We canvassed through the floor to see if anyone noticed anything," he said, strangely addressing himself to Emma and not Erik. "Darlene from the DA's office? She thinks she remembers seeing Charles leave when she was getting here for a meeting with Malone. And she thought she saw someone following him but she wasn't 100% sure."

"Can she give us a description of the suspect?" asked Emma.

"Actually, she gave us a name," Darwin revealed, swallowing hard with a quick, uneasy glance at Erik. "She said she thought it was Azazello."

"Detective Azazello?" McCoy echoed uncertainly. "Why would he be following Charles?"

But Emma frowned, looking more concerned than she had a moment before. "Azazello has worked off-duty security for the Governor many times over the years. I wouldn't call them friendly, but..."

"Do you think that this Azazello could still on his payroll? Maybe grabbed Charles for him?" Moira wanted to know.

"But why?" McCoy asked. "How would he even know about Charles? Unless he overheard him speaking to Detective Muñoz when he came for Detective Lehnsherr?"

Erik's mind was racing with possibilities and one hit him that made a few anomalies from the case slide into place. "Tabram," he said. "If Azazello is involved, that's why the Smith crime scene looked so familiar."

"You think this Azazello guy might've offed Smith for Shaw?" Sean asked. "Then what's to say he hasn't already...?" Sean looked away, clearly too disturbed to say what had crossed his -- and everyone else's -- mind.

"It's only been a few hours," Emma reminded them all, her crisp voice daring anyone to challenge her. "Charles is alive in my book until I learn otherwise."

"So you're Azazello and you overhear that Charles has figured out what happened to Smith," Moira said. "Where do you go with him?"

"Somewhere safe and secluded," Darwin replied. "But that could be anywhere. We need a way to narrow it down to places that Shaw would have easy access to, where no one would notice them keeping someone. It's not like we have a list of viable real estate to check out."

Suddenly, Sean was on his feet. "Yes, we do," he said, flailing his arms in excitement.

"Yes, we do!" Moira said, joining him on her feet. To the officers, she explained, "One of the companies along with the Hellfire under the SGS Holdings company was a real estate agency here in New York. They currently only have maybe half-dozen properties on their records, one of which is the office Quested rented out of the Meridian."

"Do you have the list?" Emma asked.

Moira shook her head. "It's on my desk at the paper, though. I can have it faxed over."

"Use my private line in my office, have it faxed there," she told Moira. The reporter nodded and all but ran out of the room, Sean on her heels.

When Emma moved to follow them, Erik stopped her. "I'm not staying here while others look for him. I'm going next time."

"Fine," she said. "As soon as we have something solid."

Erik responded to her acquiescence with a nod and then ducked out of the conference room ahead of her. He didn't have anywhere to go but back to his desk but he felt more comfortable waiting there than he did in the conference room with Xavier and McCoy. As soon as the other reporters had that list, he was going to check every address himself if he had to in order to find Charles.

He tried not to think about what he'd do if none of them panned out.

Erik jumped a little when he felt a hand on his arm. It was Darwin. "I'm sorry," his partner said.

"I'm just a little jumpy."

"I don't mean about that," he said. "If Azazello has Charles, I think it might be my fault."

"What?" Erik asked, feeling like he'd spent a day doing nothing but that.

"I might've mentioned to Azazello that...you were having some problems with Charles -- well, with a hooker you met working this case," he said, looking everywhere but at Erik. "He was really supportive, you know, after Frost told you to take a hike. He said he wanted to help, so I...just talked to him. Now, I'm wondering, if when he saw him here, he..."

Erik sighed and closed his eyes. "...he probably thought he had another Smith on his hands." He understood why Darwin was apologizing, even though it wasn't really his fault; Charles's life was in a lot more danger if Azazello, or whoever had him, thought he was just some prostitute from the street than he was if they knew he was a _freelance investigative journalist_.

It had taken him to that moment to realize it, but it made no difference to Erik. Hooker or reporter, all he wanted was Charles back safely.

"That's just another point against Azazello," Erik told him. "This isn't your fault, Darwin."

Darwin laid a hand on his shoulder, then gave it a comforting squeeze. "We're going to find him, Erik," he promised. "No way anybody crosses you like that, let alone you and Frost _and_ that Xavier cat."

Erik could only pray that Darwin was right.

 _End of Part 11_


	12. Chapter 12

The world was still a little shaky as Charles tried to open his eyes and the ache in the back of his head hadn't subsided but he could dimly hear voices coming from somewhere and something told him it was very important that he listen to them.

After a few seconds his surroundings began to focus and he realized he was in a very nice apartment, full furnished but almost impersonal enough to be hotel -- which it might've been, for all he could tell. The voices he heard weren't in the bedroom with him but coming through the half-opened door that seemed to lead to some kind of sitting area.

It took less than a minute for Charles to realize he'd been tied to his chair.

Handcuffed, actually; he was more than aware of what the metal cuffs felt like around his wrists and that was what he felt then, the chain threaded through a slat in the chair's metal backrest. He gave an experimental yank only to reinforce his original hypothesis that he was well and truly restrained, his feet similarly immobilized, tied as they were to the chair legs.

It took maybe three minutes for his next realization, which he blamed on the head injury: he'd been kidnapped.

Charles stilled his struggles against his bonds, straining to pick up the voices he'd first heard when he'd regained consciousness. The one he could hear speaking at that moment was dreadfully recognizable, distinct and familiar.

"...trouble, Azazello," the voice was saying. "Do you even know who you have in there?"

"I thought it was just some whore that Muñoz said Lehnsherr had taken up with," the second voice -- Azazello, Charles supposed -- said. "I heard him talking to Muñoz about how he'd figured it out, so I snatched him."

"Really? A prostitute?" The first voice said and, yes, Charles was sure. It was definitely Sebastian Shaw, Governor of New York, and he definitely sounded...lethal, at least to Charles's ears.

Without thinking, he started working at the cuffs again, twisting at them until he was sure he was drawing blood.

"That's what Muñoz said," Azazello said. "I figured no one would miss him."

"I don't think you've ever been more wrong," Shaw told him. Charles could hear the edge in the man's voice and he wondered if the other man could as well. "That isn't some hooker you've got. That's Charles Xavier -- not only is he a journalist, but his father is Brian Xavier, one of biggest bastards I've ever had the misfortune to meet, either personally or professionally. This is not a man who we can make disappear quietly like Elliot."

 _Disappear_ was such a quaint euphemism for murder, Charles thought grimly as he continue to pull at the cuffs and yank at whatever they'd used to bind his feet. In all his years of investigative reporting, he'd never actually gotten himself kidnapped before and it was something he hoped never to repeat again. His blood was rushing in his ears, panic spiking like he'd never experienced, growing exponentially as he made little headway on his bindings. He'd never given much thought to dying but he certainly had no plans to do so at the hands of Shaw or his henchman.

"...do exactly?" Azazello was saying. "If we let him go, he'll tell someone."

"And if we kill him, it won't do much to quell the questions around Smith, will it?" Shaw added sourly. "There's nothing I hate worse than messy complications."

Charles had to bite back a laugh at that, which his logical mind told him was probably hysteria from shock. The amused part of his mind just couldn't quite reconcile his probable-murderer with someone who talked about it like he was a red wine stain on a white carpet.

"We need to figure out how much Lehnsherr knows," Azazello said. "That's why I didn't just kill him straight out."

"Yes, Detective Lehnsherr," Shaw repeated with a sigh. "It's not going to be easy to kill him quietly either."

Funny, Charles would think later, that it was that sentiment -- their discussion of killing Erik -- that finally wrung a noise of fear from him, one loud enough that it was heard by his captors. The entire apartment went quiet in the wake of it, and finally the half-opened door was pushed opened until Shaw, still dressed in the same suit that he'd worn at the _Times_ offices, stood before him with another man that Charles recognized from Shaw's press conference and also from the last few seconds of lucidity he'd had before being rendered unconscious and kidnapped.

"Look who's decided to join us," Shaw drawled, all politician-smooth politeness. "Good to see you again so soon, Charles."

He tugged at the cuffs, forcing himself to hold his head high, defiant. "I can't say I feel the same way, Governor."

"No, I don't suppose you do." Shaw leaned over a little, peering intently into Charles's face. "I didn't realize you knew so much when I spoke to you earlier today. Azazello tells me you think you've figured it all out."

"That you had Elliot Smith killed? If I hadn't, you confirmed it for a few minutes ago," he pointed out. "Thanks for that."

Shaw snorted. "It's not as if you're going to leave here under your own power, Charles. Let's not kid ourselves by pretending like you'll be able to do something with that information."

Azazello stepped up with a nod from Shaw as the governor stepped away, as if ceding the floor. He was a rough-looking man with several scars on his face -- it was one Charles would likely never forget. "I need to know what you've told Lehnsherr," he said. When Charles answered with nothing more than a raised eyebrow, Azazello shifted forward, deliberately casual in the way the move highlighted the wicked-looking knife he carried on his belt.

Charles remembered the autopsy reports on Elliot Smith's stab-ridden body and tried not to visibly swallow at the thought of what the man could do with a blade.

"Detective Lehnsherr is hardly your problem," Charles said, relieved that his voice didn't waver. "Because there's also what I've told his partner and my partners and, I don't know, my father? This story isn't the kind I could keep to myself, even for a few hours. Not to mention who they've told since." When his two captors exchanged a look, he added, "You can hardly kill _all_ of them without raising suspicion."

"Right now, that's all speculation," Shaw said. "However, you are a very real problem that I need to get out of the way."

"I'd rather you not kill me and dump me in an alley if it's all the same to you," Charles retorted. "Especially since it won't do you a bit of good. I'm sorry, Governor, but whatever you killed Elliot for wasn't worth it."

"I'm beginning to see that," Shaw admitted. "I should've just paid him off."

Even given the danger he was in, Charles's mind was working and it connected the dots quickly on the Governor's throwaway remark. Smith must've found out about the connection between Shaw and The Hellfire Club somehow and, instead of taking it public, he'd tried to extort money from him. It made sense, he admitted, given what Angel had said about Smith's willingness to take the next step with his escort work in order to move from mid-class to high-end. Still, he hadn't deserved to be murdered for it, not when all it had been for was to preserve Shaw's political aspirations and the dirty money he'd been using to fund them.

"So what are we going to do with him?" Azazello asked and Charles could see that the henchman looked more than prepared to do whatever Shaw decided, up to and including gladly killing him where he sat, defenselessly shackled to his chair. It wasn't a pleasant position to be in.

"I haven't decided," Shaw said. "If he's right, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up after we're finished here."

"I suggest you start gassing your jet and getting the hell out of Dodge, as they say," Charles advised with bravado he didn't really feel. "You can kill me if you want but it won't change the fact that you're finished, Shaw. Your _everything_ ends now."

Now Shaw frowned, clearly unhappy with Charles's truthful estimation of his situation. "I have some phone calls to make," he announced which could've meant anything from he had real calls to make or he needed time to plot how slowly he wanted Azazello to take when he finally carved into Charles. "Keep our friend quiet here, why don't you?"

Shaw swept out of the door and closed the door behind him, leaving Charles to desperately hope that the phone call line and exit hadn't just been some elaborate signal to the henchman to start in with the interrogation methods he seemed ready to employ. Charles was of the opinion that he was tough, but he didn't want to test it with actual torture.

For some strange reason, Charles thought back to the scars he'd seen on Erik's back the first time they'd slept together, how he'd wanted to ask about the one on his shoulder that was obviously a gunshot wound, but he hadn't, not then or any other nights they'd spent in the same bed. It was a strange thing to think about but he didn't want to die without knowing that and more about Erik, including how he would've reacted when he learned the truth about Charles.

How he would react, Charles corrected himself. The last thing he needed to do was start thinking of himself in the past tense.

Fortunately, Azazello didn't seem to be in a hurry to do anything but glare at him, leaving Charles's limbs in perfect working order for the moment. When he tried to twist his wrists again in the cuffs, he noticed the slickness that was obviously his blood from the cuts he'd sustained from his efforts but he didn't feel any pain from it, at least not yet. Again, he figured he could probably blame the shock and adrenaline.

Even with the door closed, Charles could strain his ears and follow the rise and fall of Shaw's voice, and that cadence told him that Shaw was not pleased, the sharp tones of his words carrying easily through the thin wood that separated them. Charles couldn't help but hope he was taking his advice about arranging an escape plan and not focusing his ire on trying to find a way to eliminate the witnesses of his crimes -- witnesses like Charles.

He'd tried to ignore it but Azazello was still watching him rather more interest than Charles thought was necessary given the circumstances. Charles stole a glance or two in the henchman's direction before Azazello finally spoke. "I still want to know what you've told Lehnsherr."

Charles shrugged. "I don't really think it's going to matter, is it? You'll be going down with the Governor regardless."

"I should've known this was going to happen," he cursed, mostly under his breath. "Fucking _Lehnsherr_."

"You seem awfully focused on Erik," Charles pointed out. "Is there...?"

Azazello turned to glare at him and Charles might've finished his sentence if he didn't suddenly connect the dots that had eluded him since he'd woken up kidnapped. Again, he blamed the concussion he most probably was suffering from for the fact he hadn't instantly recalled a certain detective's name scrawled in the notes he'd taken from Erik. "You're a cop, aren't you?" Charles asked.

Azazello's dark look answered for him, that and the way his long fingers went to his knife, as if he were making a subtle point by drawing Charles's attention to it. Charles was sure his face made it clear that the threat had been communicated most effectively.

"Oh, _bloody hell_ ," Charles said, trying to hold on to his last vestiges of hope. There was nothing reassuring about knowing that Erik had been correct to suspect corruption and collusion amidst his fellow police officers; it was just a pointed reminder of how dire the situation was and how out of depth Charles knew himself to be.

He'd done everything he usually did to keep himself safe when he was working on a hot case but, in the end, it hadn't mattered, now when the culprit was able to spirit him away from a police station and most likely cover his tracks. Charles wasn't even sure how much time had passed since his abduction or if anyone other than Moira had started to miss him, and Erik didn't even know...

With a sinking heart, Charles truly realized that he might not make it out alive.

**

Even though it had barely taken an hour, it had seemed to take way too long before Moira's list had been properly vetted and he, Darwin, and Frost and anyone else available had used their vaulted police skills to narrow the choices down to the most viable place that Azazello or Shaw might've taken Charles after they'd made off with him.

"By the book," Frost had warned as she'd made good on her promise to let Erik and Darwin be the ones to check it out, her expression transmitting both her hope that Erik would listen and her doubt that he'd bother. If he hadn't been so distracted by everything else going on in his head, he might've at least tried to assure her that, for once, making Shaw pay wasn't the first thing on his agenda.

Charles was.

The drive to the trendy little set of apartments was terse, Darwin silent at his side as they, and a team of uniforms, flashed their lights silently as they sped through traffic. The procession stopped just short of the building where they wouldn't be visible by anyone watching from windows in the suspected apartment and, once everyone was suited up and apprised of their action plan, Erik led the way as he, Darwin and back-up quietly climbed the steps on their way to the sixth floor apartment.

Darwin had barely finished the required announcement of "Police!" before Erik had kicked open the apartment door open, weapon drawn as he rushed inside, eyes scanning for danger as well as any detail that could help them locate Charles. He took two more steps inside, gun still at the ready, clearing the small alcove that spilled into the large living room only to find Sebastian Shaw standing in the middle of it, cell phone in his head, somehow looking both startled and smug.

"Hands where I can see them," Erik snapped, gesturing with his gun.

Shaw just smiled, like he wasn't standing there with three guns pointed at his head. He slowly lifted his arms up, still holding his cell in one hand. "Well, well," he drawled. "Detective Lehnsherr."

"Where's Charles Xavier?" Erik demanded. " _Where?_ "

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Shaw began, eyes darting down the hall when he saw Darwin start to move toward it. "And I'm very sure you don't have permission for this search, Detective Muñoz."

Darwin hesitated, glancing in Erik's direction quickly for guidance on how he wanted to handle the situation.

The decision was made, not by Erik, but the loud sounds of a struggle coming from down the hall that Shaw had tried to distract them from.

"Watch him!" he barked at the officers who'd been flanking his back while he nodded for Darwin to rush the hall, Erik at his heels. Darwin took the first door they passed but it was an empty closet, while Erik took the second, which was a small bathroom. That left the second door on the left, and the two detectives didn't waste any time before zeroing in it, the flimsy door offering little resistance as Darwin shouldered it opened.

It only took Erik a split-second to register the details, alarming as they were: Charles was alive, but he was tied to a chair that had been upturned and there was blood coming from somewhere, given the splatter Erik could see on the cream-colored carpet. Charles had somehow worked one foot free of the ropes he'd been restrained with and looked as if he'd managed to plant that foot in Azazello's gut, if the other man's hunched-over position was any indication. Azazello had a long, sharp blade in his hand, nostrils flaring with anger, and he seemed intent on doing some damage with it even with Erik and Darwin both pointing guns in his direction.

"Drop it, Azazello," Erik warned, even though he would've liked nothing better than to pull the trigger. When Azazello didn't quite stop the shift of his weight onto his front foot, Erik took another step toward him. "If you don't, I'll drop _you_."

For another beat it looked like Azazello might've done something stupid, but then he released his grip on the knife and it fell from his fingers, landing harmlessly on the silken comforter spread over the bed.

"Darwin," Erik said, jerking his head in Azazello's direction. Darwin understood and, after quickly holstering his gun, he moved toward Azazello, padding him down before he pulled his arms behind his back to cuff him. Erik risked a glance toward Charles who was still tied to his over-turned chair, but he couldn't see his face from where he stood. As much as he wanted nothing more than to rush to his side, Erik had to make sure the scene was secure first.

"Malone!" Erik called out to one of the officers he knew was keeping an eye on Shaw, one he knew wouldn't be too intimidated by the forthcoming order.

"Yeah, Lehnsherr?" Malone called back.

"If you don't mind," Erik said, watching with satisfaction as Azazello hissed when the cuffs slid around his wrists. "Could you cuff the Governor and read him his rights?"

There was only the faintest pause. "If you say so!"

Erik's eyes swung back to Darwin who still had a hold of Azazello's arm. His partner must've seen something in Erik's gaze because he nodded, then began to drag the former detective out of the room. "I've got this and Shaw," Darwin promised, before he began to recite Miranda Rights at Azazello as they headed down the hall.

Darwin had barely shoved Azazello out of the room before Erik was holstering his gun. "Charles?" he said, heart hammering in his chest when he didn't get a response. He dropped to his knees at Charles's side, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw Charles's alert blue eyes looking back at him above a makeshift gag that looked to have started life as a pillow case.

"Mein Gott," he muttered as he pulled the gag away and Charles coughed, clearing this throat. "Are you all right?"

"I'm much better now that you're here," Charles managed to say, coughing a little more as Erik righted the chair and Charles along with it. Charles's head bobbed with movement, and he blinked a few times before he finally glanced up and caught Erik's worried gaze. "You are quite possibly the best thing I have ever seen in my entire life," he said, with a shaky smile even as he winced. "Although that could be the concussion talking."

Erik snorted in amusement despite the seriousness of the situation. He ran a gentle hand through Charles's hair, letting his fingers linger on his cheek for a few seconds before he dug into his pockets for his cuff key so he could undo the handcuffs that held Charles to the chair.

His mood darkened further when he realized that the blood he'd seen earlier had come from Charles's wrists, a fact he noticed as he knelt first to unlock the cuffs, then to free Charles's still-tied foot from the chair leg. Once all the bindings had been completely removed, Erik didn't resist the impulse to take hold Charles's damaged wrists, inspecting the injury as he ran a careful thumb over the bruised and bloodied skin.

"We should probably get these looked at," Erik said quietly, still holding on. As light of a touch as it was, it was a visceral reminder that Erik hadn't lost him and he was loathed to lose it.

Instead of answering in words, Charles slumped forward until his head was resting against Erik's shoulder. Erik could feel the tremors in Charles's body and his training supplied the reason -- adrenaline, fear, shock. It didn't make it easier to stand, though, not when it was _Charles_ who shook in his arms. Erik released Charles's wrists, only to slide his arms around his waist and carefully pull him to his feet. Charles didn't resist, leaning into Erik's embrace like it was the only thing he had to keep him going. Erik tightened his hold a little when he realized it might've been the truth.

Erik wasn't exactly sure how long he allowed himself to be so completely unprofessional as to ignore his crime scene in order to hold on to Charles like he was afraid to let him go, but the clack of heels on the apartment's polished wood floor told him it was ending far sooner than he would've liked.

"Erik," Emma was saying even before she made it inside, the use of his first name a testament to how distressed she was. "Why aren't you...?" Surprise flashed over her face when she took in the sight they made but her face quickly smoothed into its usual impassive mask. "I see."

Erik eased away from Charles a little. "What are you doing here?" he asked his captain.

She rolled her eyes. "I know how well you and "by the book" actually mix." She glanced toward Charles who was starting to stand under his own power instead of Erik's. "Are you all right, Mr. Xavier?"

"Fine," Charles told her, words belied by the tremor in his voice and the bright ring of bloodied bruises on his wrists. "Certainly better than before the police arrived."

"He thinks he might have a concussion," Erik volunteered, ignoring the admonishing look Charles shot him. "We need a bus."

"Already thought of that," Emma said. "They should be here in less than five minutes." It was Emma's turn to favor Erik with a chiding look. "Not to mention who came with me."

"Where the hell is my son?" Xavier's voice was whip-crack sharp and Erik didn't miss the way the sound of it made Charles's spine straighten a little.

"Dad?" Charles asked incredulously when Xavier appeared a few seconds later, sliding past Emma with a nod and not-so-subtly elbowing his way around Erik to reach his son. "What are you --"

Charles didn't have a chance to finish before his father grabbed him by his shoulders, shaking him a little. "You reckless, arrogant little bastard, I swear on your mother's grave, if you ever do this to me again, I'll kill you myself, do you hear me?"

Of all the ways he could've reacted, Erik wasn't expecting Charles to manage a real, delighted smile despite the situation and to sling an arm around his father much like he'd once seen Raven embrace Charles. "Thanks, Dad," Charles murmured.

It didn't take long before Xavier relaxed and returned it with a quick squeeze. "Arrogant little brat," Xavier said under his breath, though the affection in the words were unmistakable. "Pain in my arse since the day you were born."

"I know," Charles said, still grinning at his father, before he glanced over at the officers. "I just...how did you find me?"

"Moira," Xavier said immediately. When Emma glared at him, he added grudgingly, "And Lehnsherr and his partner, too. But Moira's the one who realized you'd gone missing, and she came to me with it."

"I'm glad you used that card," Charles told his father, with a fond look in Erik's direction.

"I didn't expect I'd have to explain who you were to him," Xavier said with a paternal frown that made Charles duck his head. "I'm very _eager_ to find out what you did that made him think you were an escort, Charles."

Charles laughed a little, but none of them missed the way he winced afterward, or the furrow of pain in his brow that didn't quite smooth out. Erik shot Emma a look and she mouthed, _any minute now_ on the ETA of the ambulance. "It really was a misunderstanding," Charles told his father, unconsciously echoing Erik's own words on the matter. "I was trying to get an interview with a street worker and, ah, Detective Lehnsherr got the wrong idea."

Erik couldn't help but defend himself. "That thing you were doing with your finger and that ring? I could've cited you for lewd acts then and there."

Charles's expression flitted to something very fond for a moment, despite the pain lines around his eyes. Then Xavier snorted. "So that's what happened to your wedding band, is it?"

Erik, already having been on a roller coaster of revelation for the day, tried not to let it all flash across his face as he stared at Charles and asked, "You're married?"

Charles looked so pained and guilty that Erik could already feel the confirmation like a stone in his stomach, but then Charles reached out, sliding his fingers across the back of the hand Erik had clenched into a fist without realizing. "No," he said, big blue eyes begging Erik for something. "Not for a very long time."

Emma cocked her head to listen as there was a sudden influx of sound from the apartment's living room. "EMTs," she explained to the men, looking almost sincere as she said, "I'm glad you're safe, Mr. Xavier." Then her face hardened as she glanced behind her and saw the EMTs waiting for their chance to enter. "Come on, Lehnsherr," she said.

With one last glance at Charles as the EMTs swarmed him, Erik followed Emma back into the living room where Azazello and Shaw waited in cuffs, flanked by Darwin and Malone. Shaw's eyes turned steely when Emma stopped before him.

"You and your detectives have made a very grave mistake, my dear," he told.

Emma's voice was icy. "No, Sebastian. _This_ wasn't the mistake." She sighed, then pointed at Malone and another officer. "Take them down to a black-and-white. We need to get them back to the station."

Malone still looked a little shell-shocked that he'd arrested the Governor, but he nodded and led the man away, his partner towing Azazello behind him.

"This isn't your fault, Frost," Erik offered, despite the grudge he'd held only hours before. But with Charles safe and Shaw in handcuffs, he found it easier to be magnanimous.

"No," she said. "But I didn't help matters and there will be consequences for it. But that's not important now." She almost managed to smile. "You did good work, Detective. You and Muñoz."

"Thanks, Captain," Darwin said.

She nodded. "Someone still has to book the Governor, Erik," she said as she headed toward the door. "I figured you'd like the honor."

Erik watched her leave as Darwin came to stand beside them. They both watched as the EMTs came out of the bedroom with Charles on a stretcher and Xavier hovering menacingly in their wake. "What's with the stretcher?" Erik asked and only Xavier stopped to answer.

"He most definitely has a concussion," Xavier explained. "It's a precaution but they're taking him in for observation. So if you..." Xavier stopped, shook his head. "Never mind. Nice to meet you, Detective, let's never do it again."

As the officers stood there, watching as the apartment emptied of activity, Darwin's phone beeped. Erik watched as he frowned, reached for his phone and then cursed under his breath when he read the text message he'd received.

"What?" asked Erik.

Darwin winced. "I forgot to call Alex," he explained. "And I was already in the dog house over that little scene this morning. Not that it was my fault I thought my boyfriend was chummy with a hooker instead of a reporter." He mock-glared at Erik. "Anything I can do to stop you from sabotaging my relationship at every turn?"

"Nope," he said, grinning a little.

"You be that way," Darwin said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. "I'll just remember to return the favor when I get the chance."

It reminded Erik that, for all they'd accomplished, there was still a lot he needed to figure out.

"Let's hope you get it."

**


	13. Chapter 13

The last place Charles had wanted to be when he had a story to finish was stuck in the hospital, but the doctors had had other ideas given the severity of the concussion Azazello had given him. When he'd tried to appeal to his father, even Brian had reluctantly sided with the doctor when she had Charles admitted overnight for observation, although there had been a painful sympathy in his eyes when he did so.

But Charles had never been one so easily deterred when it came to a story, especially not after what he'd went through what he had to get it, so a few hours after he'd been settled into his private room for the evening, Moira and Sean had arrived, armed with notes and laptops, much to the horror of the night shift nursing staff. That hadn't stopped them, either, and Brian had eventually used his considerable pull with whoever he knew at the hospital so that Charles was left alone to write the story he'd spent the last two weeks living and breathing.

Raven had shown up at the hospital as soon as their father had remembered to call her and let her know that Charles had been found, and she'd refused to leave his side all night, crawling into the hospital bed to curl up with him when Moira, Sean and Brian's presence had left little room for any other option. She was also the one who ended up with Charles's laptop settled across her legs, taking his story by dictation when he'd realized that staring at a computer screen was the last thing he was capable of while nursing a concussion and that his wrists, still painful beneath their bandages, weren't quite up to the task of typing.

Sometime in the middle of the night -- most of it a blur for Charles -- he'd handed off his draft to Moira to finish, having done as much as he could. She had hurried off with Sean back to the paper as Charles finally accepted the pain medication that the nurses had been instructed to give him before falling into a hazy sleep that was interrupted every few hours to make sure he hadn't been more damaged than they'd suspected.

But the next morning, when Brian had shown up with a paper in his hand to show both Charles and Raven, one with a byline that boldly read "Charles Xavier" instead of "Francis Pembroke," Charles couldn't help but feel like it had all been worth it.

That had all been three days ago.

Charles was now back recuperating at his home under Raven's watchful eye, although she was currently out running errands, a fact he was glad for when the doorbell rang and he opened it to find Hank standing there, looking nervous and ill-at-ease.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, which he realized a second too late might've sounded unkind. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, Hank. I'm just...surprised."

Hank tried to smile. "I hope I'm not bothering you," he said. "I just wanted to come by and check on you."

Charles actually managed a real smile, which made Hank relax. "Of course not," he said, opening the door to let his friend into the brownstone. "Come on in."

He wasn't so addle-brained that he'd forgotten his manners, although there were lingering effects to the concussion that he was finding extremely irritating, including the headaches, blurred vision and a mild case of vertigo. It was why Raven was waiting on him hand and foot as if she was certain he was on death's door, but Charles was fully capable of offering his guest a drink, although Hank politely declined as he settled in a chair across from the sofa where Charles sat.

"So how are you?" Hank asked, his frown returning. "I know you haven't been answering your phone or email since you got out of the hospital."

"I've had Raven screening it for me," he admitted. "She wasn't supposed to screen _you_ out. I apologize, Hank."

He shrugged. "I only called and emailed once and I figured...you're okay, right?"

"The concussion is taking longer than I would like to sort itself out but the doctors have assured me it's just a matter of time," Charles said. "There's no need to worry about me, but thank you for asking."

"Concussions can be serious," Hank began. "Have they checked to make sure...?"

"I had the best doctors my father's money could buy," Charles said wryly, cutting off the medical babble before it started. "I'm sure they took everything into account."

"You're right, of course," Hank said, ducking his head away from Charles's eyes. "I'm glad you're okay. I felt really horrible when I realized that you'd been...well, you know."

Charles finally understood the strange hesitance in his friend. "Surely you don't think I blame you?"

"I _did_ get you involved," Hank said.

"I wanted the story, Hank," Charles reminded. "None of this is your fault."

The tension in Hank's shoulders finally bled out as he slumped forward a little. "I, just, you know, didn't, you know..."

Charles leaned for as much as he could and gave Hank's shoulder a quick squeeze. "I understand."

"I wanted to come by before now," Hank admitted in a rush. "But things have been crazy at the station. Even more than usual, I mean, especially with Frost on administrative leave and everything."

"Really?" Charles asked, surprised and yet not. Moira had been doing the follow-up work on the case and she'd kept him in the loop, but other than telling him how instrumental Captain Frost had been in helping locate him, she hadn't mentioned her much. "I didn't realize."

"I think she wanted it as much they wanted it honestly," Hank said. "She and Governor Shaw were pretty tight and I think it's been hard for her, to find out that he got her mixed up in this." He paused, wincing. "Please don't repeat that to anyone. It's off the record."

"I'm not really up to any sleuthing at the moment," Charles teased. "You're safe, for the moment."

Hank managed a nervous grin in response, but it didn't take long before it faded away. He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "Have you heard from Detective Lehnsherr, since...?"

Even Charles wasn't a good enough actor to hide his wince or his sadness at Hank's question. "No," he answered. Raven had packed up the few items of Erik's that had been at Charles's place before he had even gotten out of the hospital and sent them back to Erik in care of the police station. As much as Charles had hoped that he'd hear from Erik, he wasn't surprised he hadn't, no matter how much it hurt. It had been a risk to keep Erik in the dark about his motives the way he had and Charles couldn't even say he blamed the detective for it. Still, all of his logical understanding didn't make his heart ache less with the loss. "But I hadn't really expected to."

"He's come by my office a few times asking about you," Hank revealed. "I just thought..."

"You were right that he's a good man and a great detective," Charles said softly. "If he...if you get the chance, let him know that from me, will you?"

Hank's blue gaze was painful in its sympathy, and Charles couldn't help but imagine a future where Hank wasn't the only one of them begging for scraps of information about a lost love. "Of course, I will."

Hank didn't stay much longer, a lucky fact since Raven returned soon after, and Charles was fairly certain he wasn't well enough to witness that awkward reunion. He and his sister passed a quiet evening and a similarly quiet morning and afternoon the next day. Raven had remained glued to his side for those hours and, while Charles was touched by her devotion, it was getting to be a little much.

"I don't mind," she said when he said something similar out loud. "I don't want you to need help and not have anyone here."

"And I'm grateful, love, truly I am," he said. "But honestly? I could use some space."

Raven frowned. "You just want to mope in peace."

He ignored her accusation. "I think it would do us both some good if you took the night off from babysitting me."

She deliberated his words for a moment before she finally relented with a sigh. "Fine," Raven told him. "But you have to promise you'll call me if you need anything."

"I promise," he told her. "Now get out of here, have fun, sleep in your own bed. You can come back in the morning to reassure yourself I'm alive if you need to."

"I will," she told him. "And if you can't get me, you have to call someone, okay?"

"I have Moira and Sean on speed dial," Charles told her. "Someone will come to my rescue if something happens."

Raven reached for her purse but then stopped, turning to look at him again with a frown marring the smooth skin of her forehead. "Are you sure?"

He nodded. "I'm sure."

"It's just..." she trailed off, searching for the words."You've been so sad, Charles, since everything. It's not like you, not since...well, you know. I'm worried about you."

"This, too, shall pass," he said, a hint of humor in his tone, but it didn't cover just how right he knew she was. "I'll be fine, Raven. Off you go."

It took a few more minutes of cajoling before Charles finally managed to hustle Raven out the door, and only after a bone-crushing hug goodbye did she actually let him close the door behind her.

Charles couldn't help admit that the silence in the wake of Raven's departure was nice, even if it did give him more time to think about all the things he had avoided thinking about -- namely, Erik. It was amazing that it had only taken such a short amount of time for Erik to worm himself so thoroughly into Charles's heart that he could miss him as much as he did, but he had and Charles knew he'd just have to get over it, the same as he'd done when his marriage had fallen apart. The fact that he was even comparing them was another sober reminder of how deeply he had wounded himself with his own bad decisions.

Raven had only been gone a few minutes before Charles heard a knock on his door and couldn't help but wonder if she'd forgotten something or if she had just changed her stubborn mind once again, deciding that Charles wasn't fit to be left alone, even for the night. When the knock sounded again, he rolled his eyes, scrambling up from the couch, ready to demand an explanation as to why she didn't let herself in with her key.

When Charles pulled the door open and found himself facing Erik and not his sister, all ability to speak fled from him. "Erik," he finally said, more disbelieving breath than word.

Despite his certainty that he'd never seen him again, Erik Lehnsherr was standing on his front step, dressed casually in slacks and a turtleneck, looking as nervous as Charles felt.

"Hi," Erik said. "Can I...come in?"

Charles blamed the concussion for the strange burning in his chest and his sudden lightheadedness. "Oh, yes, of course," he said, stepping back to let the detective enter.

As he watched Erik's back walk ahead of him into the living room, Charles tried to think of everything he wanted to say before he took a deep breath and followed.

**

Erik tried not to let his nervousness show as he took a seat on Charles's familiar sofa, looking up as he watched Charles hesitate a long moment before he joined him. In between all the chaos at the job, Erik had spent the last few days soul-searching, trying to think of exactly what he wanted to say the next time he saw Charles -- Charles Xavier, freelance investigative journalist, not Charles the high-end escort, the man he'd thought he'd met and _liked_ and...

As he watched Charles shift uncomfortably in the silence that stretched between them, Erik took in the sight he made. Charles was still a little pale and there was still a hint of bruises around one wrist. But his eyes were sharp, still too blue and entirely too soulful when Erik wanted to hold onto some of his anger, and his mouth was set in a grim line that reminded Erik more of Brian Xavier than it did his son.

Looking for some way to start the conversation he'd come to have, Erik's eyes wandered to the coffee table, to the folded paper with the headline that announced Shaw's downfall. He reached for it, eyes focusing on the print. "I read it," he told Charles, the first words spoken since he'd stepped inside. "It was good."

"Thank you," Charles said quietly, a hint of what might've been guilt in his voice. "I couldn't have done it without you."

Erik let out a bark of a laugh, probably harsher than he'd planned given Charles's wince at the sound. "I could say the same to you," he admitted. "You were...quite instrumental in breaking the case."

"I..." Charles trailed off, shaking his head. "It all worked out, I suppose."

Erik wasn't used to the Charles before him, a Charles that was so obviously nervous and distressed. The mean part of him thought it was only fair, given the lies Charles had told him, but the other part -- the larger part -- hated to see anything that made him look defeated. It reminded him too much of how he'd looked in that bedroom where he'd been held captive, closer to death than any of them probably liked to think about. "I guess so." He laid the paper back down on the table. "We solved it, in any case."

"Perhaps at a higher cost than we'd planned," Charles murmured and Erik glanced toward him, only to see that Charles's eyes stared off in the distance, unfocused and faraway.

"You got your byline," Erik said. "Surely, it was worth it."

"Sometimes I think so," he admitted, eyes wandering to Erik's face, solemn and bright. "But sometimes I wonder..."

It was Erik that looked away. "McCoy told me you were still feeling poorly from the concussion," Erik said, trying to keep his tone brusque and business-like. Suddenly he wasn't even sure why he'd come to see Charles in the first place. "I'm sure once that's passed..."

"Is that really what you think?" Charles asked him, sharp and demanding, much more like the Charles he'd met, pushy and confident. "That when I say I have regrets that it's because I took a knock to the head?"

"You were also kidnapped."

"You're also playing stupid and it doesn't suit you, _Detective_ ," Charles told him. Something fierce had seized hold of his features and Erik couldn't make himself look away again. "How can you doubt that all the regrets I have are ones to do with you?"

The words settled like lead in the pit of Erik's stomach and he felt himself coming to his feet. "It's not like we ever have to ---"

He wasn't even standing before Charles reached out and dragged him back down to the sofa, hand tight around his wrist. "You are a bloody idiot, Erik Lehnsherr," he told him. "First for thinking that I was a hooker, then for continuing to believe it and _then_ for thinking that I regretted any of it except lying to you."

The lead seemed to melt away at Charles's words, turning into a warmth that Erik almost wanted to ignore in favor of pressing his point. But Charles was looking at him with those big blue eyes, shining with the same soft emotion that lit his voice. "Is that supposed to be an apology?" he couldn't help but ask.

"Yes, it is," Charles said, almost smiling. He released his hold on Erik's wrist in favor of sliding a little closer, letting one arm slide around Erik on the back of the sofa, one leg crossed over Erik's. In order to completely obliterate Erik's defenses, Charles leaned into him, forehead resting against Erik the same way it had when Erik had rescued him from Azazello. "You've met my father, right? It's amazing I'm capable of even that, if you must know."

Despite himself, Erik smiled at that as he felt himself relax into Charles's touch. "He is something else."

"He's a terror," Charles quickly supplied. "An absolute terror." His breath was warm against Erik's cheek. "Erik," he said, more serious. "I told you from the beginning that what was between us wasn't about anything else but _us_." He pulled away a little, hands coming up to frame Erik's face, to keep him from looking away as he added, "Surely you believe that?"

"I want to," he said, giving in to the temptation to touch in return, fingers tracing over Charles's where they still cradled his face. "I've never...before..." he trailed off."When I realized you were missing, I couldn't..."

Charles brushed a kiss against his mouth to stop the incoherent flow of words. "It was horrible of me to let you continue to think I was someone other than who I was," he said. There was a teasing echo to his words but his eyes were wide and sincere. "I didn't set out to fool you and I didn't even realize until that first morning after that you thought...well, what you did. I should've explained when I figured it out but...things were moving fast, both with the case and with us." He paused. "I had planned to tell you, you know, the day I was kidnapped. I wouldn't have been able to hide it, anyway, once Alex told Detective Muñoz the truth."

It was hard to hold onto the last vestiges of his anger and hurt with Charles wrapped around him like he was and Erik found he didn't want to, not like he'd thought he had. No matter how hard he had tried, both had always been secondary to the earth-shattering relief he'd felt when he'd found Charles alive instead of dead, to the fear that had come before that, the fervent prayer that he be safe. It all paled in comparison to that and Erik would be lying to himself to pretend otherwise. "I didn't want to lose you," Erik confessed, reaching up to pull Charles's hands from his face. "Not then and not now, I want...I _want_ this to become... _something_."

Charles smiled his first real smile of the evening, a smile that Erik had only seen a few times since they met, dazzling in its intensity. "You have a way with words, my friend," he said, still smiling. "I was thinking the same thing exactly."

Erik's disbelief at that flippant remark quickly melted away as Charles twined his arms around Erik's neck and pulled him down for a kiss, mouth lush and demanding. It was amazing how accustomed Erik had become to Charles's mind-druggingly thorough kisses in so short a time and how much he'd grown to miss them in an even shorter amount; it was like a match to tinder, setting his nerve endings to fire with no more than the clash of their lips and the faint drag of Charles's fingers through his hair. Before he realized exactly what he'd done, Erik had pulled Charles closer, almost into his lap given the way they curled around each other on the sofa, one hand tracing a curving path from Charles's hip to his knee and back again.

When Charles moaned into his mouth as he tried to press even closer, Erik reluctantly pulled away, remembering what McCoy had said about the lingering side effects of his concussion. "Are you sure you're all right for this?" he asked, breathless. "You're still..."

"I'm fine," Charles assured him, wrapping the one leg more securely around Erik. "It's very noble of you to be concerned, but I'm perfectly capable of _whatever_ we might decide to get up to this evening."

Erik shivered a little at the promise in Charles's tone, one echoed in his eyes. There was nothing Erik wanted more than to drag Charles off to bed but he had to be _sure_ this time instead of ignoring the niggling doubts like he had before. If he was going to invest -- although it seemed a foregone conclusion that he already had -- Erik wanted to clear the air between them completely. "Charles," he said.

Charles must've sensed the shift in Erik's mood because he regarded him steadily. "Erik?"

"Before," he began, then cleared his throat, not sure he could phrase it the way he'd planned. "Is there anything else? That I don't know. That you think I should?"

Charles pulled back a little. "I could ask you the same thing," he said. "You weren't exactly forthcoming about your personal life."

Erik nodded a little, accepting the criticism. "There's not much to tell," he said. "I was married once, too. It didn't work out and I haven't seen her in years."

Charles held his eyes for what seemed like forever, clearly debating with himself over something. Erik tried to be patient but he felt all the tension from before creeping up on him as Charles remained silent, biting down on his lip like he was afraid to speak. Finally, when Erik had lost all hope of a response, Charles blurted something out. "David."

Erik was certain his heart wasn't going to survive any more surprises from Charles. "There _is_ someone else, just not your wife."

" _No_ ," Charles objected, very sharply. "Honestly, I'm a little concerned about how this is going to work if you keep jumping to the worst conclusion you can think of."

"I'll work on it," he promised, meaning it. "So who's David?"

Charles let his eyes settle on some point over Erik's shoulder. "He's my son, biologically speaking, although I don't...he lives with his mother, my ex-wife, in Europe. With her new husband. We all decided in a very adult manner that it would be better that way for everyone," he finished softly, unable to hide the hurt. His eyes finally cut back to meet Erik's. "Gabrielle, David...you've met my family, my friends. I really can't think of anything else. I _swear_."

Faced with such painful sincerity, there was only one thing Erik could say. "I believe you."

It brought a ghost of a smile back to Charles's face. "You do?"

Erik nodded, then leaned in to kiss the smile completely back onto his face. "I do," he confirmed between one kiss and the next.

Charles's arms tightened around him. "Then take me to bed," he whispered into Erik's ear before tugging the lobe between his teeth.

So Erik did just that.

**

When he woke up the next morning, it took Erik a moment to remember where he was or how he got there, but the familiar outline of Charles's bedroom coupled with his very familiar form wrapped around Erik's quickly reminded him of the night before. He couldn't help but allow himself to fall into that bright warm feeling that had hovered on the edges ever since he'd first met Charles, a feeling that he was tentatively sure most people called happiness. It had been a while since he'd really felt the full brunt of it but it was there waiting, threatening to expand inside his chest if given half the chance.

Erik planned on giving it more than just half of one.

Since Charles was sleeping heavily at his side -- a minor victory since past experience had had him fleeing the bed far before Erik woke -- Erik allowed himself the indulgence of his desire to reassure himself through touch; he brushed his fingers over the curve of Charles's cheek before he threaded those same fingers through his mussed hair, reveling in the very ability to do so. Two weeks earlier, Erik couldn't have imagined that anything like Charles was waiting on the horizon but he was surprised -- and grateful -- that he had been.

In the distance, probably from downstairs, Erik could hear the faint sound of something ringing, perhaps a phone, but he ignored it since Charles slept through it, content to stay where he was until Charles finally decided to join him. He didn't know how long he drifted in the twilight between complete wakefulness and slumber, lulled into that peaceful drowsiness by Charles still curled up at his side, but the far-off din of ringing sounded again, this time succeeding in pulling Charles from sleep.

Charles blinked up at Erik a few times, a smile winding around the curl of his mouth when he finally focused on him. "Good morning," he said.

"Good morning," Erik replied, unable to stop the smile that came to his own face.

"That's a very good look on you," Charles said, mischief apparent on his face as he pulled Erik down for a kiss. It didn't last long enough but it did the job of casting aside any doubts Erik might've had. In fact, it was enough to cast aside any thoughts Erik might've had about leaving bed for the rest of the day. He stretched himself over Charles who hummed his approval against his mouth as Erik let his hand drift beneath the sheet, intent on the hardness he could feel pressed against him.

They only had a few seconds of warning before a voice shattered the quiet morning.

"I swear to god, you better be dead, Charles!" Raven said as she flung the bedroom open, huffing from what Erik assumed was her dash up the stairs. "I mean it, you.... _oh my god!_ " Almost as fast as she'd busted in, Raven swung around, turning her back on the room even though she didn't release her death grip on the doorknob. "Charles!"

"Good morning, Raven," Charles said with a groan, shooting Erik a dark look as Erik jerked away from their rather comprising position -- not that it did much to erase what Raven had seen when she first entered the room. "May I ask what in the bloody hell you're doing here?"

"I told you I was coming back to check on you," she said, still scowling in the direction of the hall. "I've called, like, ten times and you didn't answer the phone. I had horrible visions of you cracking your head open in the bathroom and bleeding to death all alone so I rushed over here."

"Obviously that isn't the case," he said with a sigh, re-arranging the sheet over his body.

"Obviously," she parroted back. "You're definitely not alone, for one thing." She risked a peek over her shoulder, shooting Erik a flirty little grin that wasn't far-off from her brother's. "Nice to see _you_ , again, Erik."

Erik could feel a flush crawling over his skin. "Raven," he said in return.

"I'm really touched you came all this way to make sure I hadn't killed myself taking a shower," Charles told her. "But could you please just...well, leave? Thanks ever so much."

"Well, I can't. Exactly," she said. "You see, Dad's downstairs."

For the first time that morning, Charles actually showed some alarm. " _Excuse me_?"

"He wanted us to all have breakfast together and talk about...things," she finished vaguely with a wave of her hand. "I don't know really, he wanted to come with me. So, he's downstairs with muffins, trying to figure out your coffee maker."

"Oh, god," Charles groaned.

Raven nodded. "So you've probably got a few minutes, maybe? Before he comes up here himself." She laughed a little. "So I'll be seeing the both of you in a few, I guess. Bye!"

She was at least nice enough, Erik observed, to tug the door closed behind her.

Despite his own horror at the situation, Charles's obvious distress was amusing. "I guess that means we should get dressed?" Erik asked.

Charles had flung an arm over his eyes during Raven's parting comments, one that he lifted away now. "Last night, I should've probably warned you," he said. "My family is insane. There's only the two of them, but they're completely around the bend."

"I've met them both before," Erik reminded him. "I wasn't totally unaware." Erik was ready to make another teasing remark about apples not falling far from the tree when he noticed a hint of real concern in Charles's expression. "What?"

"Gabrielle, she..." Charles trailed off, for once lost for words but Erik was smart enough to connect the dots.

"Your family isn't going to scare me off," Erik promised, thinking of his own mother who would be subjecting Charles to her own version of terrifying as soon as he could arrange it. "Even if your father already hates me and your sister keeps giving me _looks_."

"My dad hates everyone except Moira," Charles assured him lightly, relaxing enough to take one of Erik's hands between his own. "And Raven is a bloody shameless flirt, pay her no attention."

Erik snorted. "There's an English saying about pots and kettles..."

Charles shot him a mock-stern look before he leaned up to give him a quick kiss. "It will only take about three more minutes before Dad realizes he can't figure out the coffeemaker and he'll be on his way up," Charles warned. "I suggest we get dressed."

Erik took his advice as Charles moved to do the same, quickly locating his slacks and turtleneck from where they'd ended up on the floor. Charles had slipped back into his sweats and t-shirt from the night before, although he still was sending apprehensive looks in Erik's direction like he expected him to bolt at any moment.

"We can handle breakfast with your father," he assured Charles, sneaking one more kiss as they pulled the bedroom open. "And your sister."

"That sure of yourself, detective?" Charles teased.

Erik shook his head. "Us," he corrected. "We make a good team, don't you think?"

"Not just good," Charles grinned, his face lighting up with something that Erik thought was close to what he'd felt when he'd woken up, the thing he was petty sure was happiness. "The best."

With that smile as an incentive, Erik was fairly certain that there wasn't anything he couldn't face.

**

 _The End_


End file.
